
Glass x > \ ^5 
Book 



DISCOURSES 



ON THE 

PROVIDENCE and GOVERNMENT 






OF 



GOD. 

BY THE LATE 

Rev. NEWCOME CAPPE. 
Edited by CATHARINE CAPPE. 



" And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and 
as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty 
thunderings, saying, Alleluia : for the Lord God omnipotent 
reigneth.".... .Rev. xix. 6. 



THE THIRD EDITION. 

Printed by Thomas Wilson aud Sons, High-Ousegate, 

FOIL LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, AND BROWN, LONDON S 

AND JFOR WILSON AND SONS, YORK. 

1818. 






^-yuM 



ADDRESS 

TO THE YOUTH OF THE RISING GENERATION^ 

WITHOUT REFERENCE TO SECT OR PARTY, 

Prefixed to the second Edition, 1811. 

BY THE EDITOR. 



J. o you who are entering on the most 
hazardous and important period of human 
life, the following Discourses are especially 
dedicated. They were written by one whose 
whole character was a faithful transcript of 
the principles they inculcate, and whose de- 
clining years of debility and languor, bore 
ample testimony to their truth and sublime 
energy. 

You will not be offended, my young friends, 
that I address you as children of mortality — 
as being of yourselves, frail, and feeble, and 
dependant — for who by his own power cam 
preserve himself in health or life ; by his 
own energy reanimate the lifeless clay, or 
enter upon and choose his own future station 
amidst the unknown, awful, and never-ending 

A2 



scenes which shall assuredly succeed ? How 
important, then, that you should know assured- 
ly whether you are the victims of a blind 
fatality, the sport of time and chance, or are 
safe and secure under the care and protection 
of him, " who alone liveth and reigneth," 
with whom " one day is as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day ?" 

To bring you to the better knowledge of 
this great Being, and to demonstrate his good- 
ness and power, is the object of the following 
Discourses — an object, which, if the Editor 
mistakes not, the Writer has fully attained* 
Read and study them, she beseeches you, with 
seriousness and attention ; endeavour to fix 
in your minds a deep and lasting impression 
of the great truths they contain ; and should 
you be so happy as to imbibe their spirit, the 
spirit of pure and genuine devotion ; you will 
possess a never-failing antidote against th£ 
degrading despicable vices of low sensuality; 
will be kept aloof from the vortex, not 
much less destructive, of fashionable levity 
and folly ; will be preserved from a sordid 
selfish spirit ; your minds will expand with the 
noblest views, your spirits will be cheered by 
the most reviving prospects, and your declining 
age, (if you attain to old age,) will be crown- 
ed with dignity and honour— tranquil and 



5 

happy in yourselves, you will spread and com- 
municate tranquillity and happiness to all 
within your influence. 

But there are other more peculiar con- 
siderations at this time and in this country 
which might be added to these general ones, 
to enforce upon the youthful mind the ab- 
solute necessity and extreme importance of 
early acquainting itself with the providence 
and government of God. For, were we now 
to inquire respecting the long established 
kingdoms of modern Europe, in the language 
of the Assyrian Embassador to the pious 
Hezekiab, " Where is the King of Hamah 
and the King of Arphad, and the King of the 
city of Sephervaim, of Henah, and Ivah ?"— 
Would the answer create no alarm ? — Should 
we feel quite certain that our fortitude and 
our resignation may not soon stand in need 
of every support which the best principles 
and most approved virtue can supply? What 
would have been thought of him who should 
have ventured to predict a few years ago, 
the wonderful revolutions which have lately 
taken place? and who shall now presume to 
foresee where the desolating sword shall find 
its scabbard? Arm yourselves then, I entreat 
you, against the trying events which may 
already be fast approaching ; and be early 

A3 



convinced, that no armour is so secure as a 
holy and virtuous life, no consolation so all- 
powerful, as a well-grounded belief and firm 
confidence in the universal providence and 
government of God. 

Your sincere well wisher and 

Faithful friend, 

The Editor, 



POSTSCRIPT TO THE THIRD EDITION, 
December, 1817. 

If it appeared of peculiar moment in the 
year 1811 to point out the unspeakable im- 
portance of the doctrine developed in these 
Discourses on the government and providence 
of God, as the only real source of consola- 
tion to thousands and tens of thousands then 
groaning under the dreadful sufferings, and 
trembling under the heart-rending anxieties 
of the sanguinary conqueror, with what 
sentiments of ardent gratitude and humble 
thankfulness should you not now, my young 
friends, be exhorted to cherish in your hearts 
a lively and abiding sense of the same great 
truth in the year ifel8. In 1812, the man- 



7 

date was issued, to the vanquished so merciful, 
to the <;ruel invader so awful— " Hitherto 
" shalt thou go and no farther." Even the 
victor was compelled to confess, that " the 
" seasons fought against him.' 7 But you will 
not rest here, but remembering who is the 
Lord of seasons, who it is that " ruleth the 
u raging of the sea, and stilleth the waves 
" when they arise," will rather say with the 
prophet, " This also proceedeth from Jehovah 
" God of hosts : he sheweth himself won- 
" derful in counsel, great in operation :"** 
•* He reduces princes to nothing, and maketh 
" the judges of the earth a mere inanity." t 

We know indeed, in general, that when the 
judgments of God are upon the earth, the 
nations of the world will learn righteousness ; 
but do we not likewise observe in all the 
dispensations of his providence, that these 
general ends are continually made at the 
same time subservient to many other impor- 
tant purposes, and this, not only in relation 
to particular states, but even of the various 
individuals that compose them ; or rather, 
are we not then justified in concluding, that 
this may have been eminently the case in 
respect of some of the issues of the late 



1 Lowth's Isaiah, xxviii. 29. + Ibid. xl. 23. 

A4 



tremendous political tempest.* Perhaps it 
was indispensably necessary that the mighty 
Russian empire should apparently be shook 
to its very foundation, and that all the hor- 
rors inflicted and endured by a retreating 
apostate army, should be held in full display 
in the sight of astonished Europe, in order 
to prepare the hearts of worldly ambitious 
men for the reception of the gospel of peace. 
Do we know that any other train of events 
than those which did actually take place could 
so effectually have disposed the hearts of 
both prince and people, to expedite the trans- 
lation of the Scriptures into so many different 
languages, and to have instantly co-operated 
with one heart and mind in aiding their 
universal defusion ? 

Surely we may here, if ever, apply the lan- 
guage of our Saviour, adopted from the words 
of the Psalmist, and applied to the impending 



* See the truly astonishing account of the awful circum- 
stances under which the outline of a Bible Society was con- 
templated at Moscow, and which has since been carried into 
effect at Petersburgh, and from thence throughout the most re- 
mote parts of the Russian empire, by the truly apostolic labours 
of a Pa^erson, a Pinxerton, and a Henderson : names* 
which along with those of many others who have nobly devoted 
their lives to this great object, will doubtless be held in everlast- 
ng remembrance !— See Owen's History of the Rise and Pro» 
gress of the British and Foreign Bible Society.. 



9 

destruction of Jerusalem — " This is the Lord's 
M doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes." 

Nor is it less important to be able to look 
up to God as the sole arbiter of all events, 
in an hour of sorrow and dismay. — Since the 
above was written, my young friends, you 
have witnessed a most awful and impressive 
proof of the instability of all earthly great- 
ness, in the unexpected death of a most 
amiable princess. You have seen that nei- 
ther youth nor beauty, the most eminent 
attainments, or the highest rank, can ward off 
the fatal blow. What under so affecting a 
dispensation can pour the bairn of consola- 
tion into the wounded spirit; what under 
such a calamity can wipe away a nation's 
tears, but a firm, well-founded practical be- 
lief in the universal government and provi- 
of God? Foster, I beseech you, in your 
hearts an abiding sense of this most im- 
portant truth: — In prosperity may it excite 
your warmest gratitude, and in adversity be 
your strong hold and rock of defence! — I 
cannot so well express my earnest wishes 
that it may in all seasons be productive of 
every virtuous exertion, of every sacred sen- 
timent of reverent awe and humble filial 
love, as in the affectionate language of the 
Author of the following Discourses. 

A 5 



10 

" Young man, while thy heart is tender ; 
" while it is not yet made callous either by 
" the vices and dissipations, or the interests 
" and cares of this world, cultivate the sacred 
" sentiments of piety ; give all diligence that 
" thy heart may deiight itself in the law of 
" God, and that thy will may be totally* 
" universally, and cheerfully absorbed in 
« his." * 

C. C. 

* See Discourse V. 



ADVERTISEMENT, 

By the Editor. 



X H E following Discourses, originally pub* 
lished in the life time of the Author, were 
not written by him with a view to publica- 
tion, but in his ordinary course of preaching. 
They were transcribed from his dictating in 
the year 1795, and were published with his 
consent : but his health was at that time so 
extremely enfeebled, that they never could 
have the benefit of his own correction. 
Ushered into the world under circumstances 
so unfavourable, and wholly without patron- 
age, it was not to be expected that they 
should immediately attract general attention, 
or be very widely circulated. They have, 
however, been duly appreciated by competent 
judges, have afforded great consolation to 
many an afflicted spirit, when all other con- 
solations failed, and have passed through two 
large editions, 

What would have been the holy triumph 
of the Writer of them, could he have antici- 
cipated the cheering contrast between the 
gloom and darkness with which philosophy, 
falsely so called, (fostered by the ferocious 
partizan.s of the French revolution) had over- 

- A 6 



12 

spread the Christian horizon when they were 
first published, with that celestial light which 
the extensive circulation of those Scriptures 
in which he delighted has now diffused over 
half the globe ? But if he were not permitted 
(and where is the child of mortality to whom 
it is permitted) to know " the times and the 
a seasons which the Father hath put in his 
" own power," yet did he fully enjoy the con- 
solatory elevating hope, that the darkness 
would be but temporary. " Depend upon it," 
he was wont to say, " these evils are merely 
" passing clouds, from which the great truths 
" of the gospel will emerge with redoubled 
" splendour—the everlasting gospel is its 
" name." 

May the excellent persons of every sect and 
party, in every quarter of the globe, who have 
so nobly emulated each other in efforts the 
most strenuous, to aid the translation, and to 
promote the universal diffusion of the sacred 
Oracles, thereby contribute to hasten the hap- 
py period we are encouraged to expect, when 
" nation shall not lift up sword against nation, 
" neither shall there be war anymore." Still 
triumphantly proceed, with equal ardour, in- 
tegrity, and success, conquering and to con- 
quer ; not with the poisoned arrows of pride, 
ambition, and vain-glory, but with the sacred 
sword of the spirit — meekness, righteousness, 
and peace! C. C, 



A SHORT ANALYSIS 

OF THE FOLLOWING DISCOURSES, 

DESIGNED TO SERVE THE PURPOSES EITHEP* OF A TABLE 
OF CONTENTS, OR OF AN INDEX, 

BY THE EDITOR. 

DISCOURSE FIRST. 

The ordinary as well as the extraordinary events of 
life proceed from God — Important practical uses of 
this belief — The doctrine contained in the text, 
("Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when 
the Lord commandeth it not ?") may be understood 
either as relating to all the operations of God, or, in 
a more limited acceptation, as relating to extraordi- 
nary instances of his interposition — State of the pro- 
phet's mind in reflecting on the calamities of his 
country— The advantage of faith founded on just 
principles — Consolations to be derived from it- 
View of the doctrine as deducible from the text — 

First — In its more limited, 

Second — In its universal acceptation. Page 25 

DISCOURSE SECOND. 

First— To foreknow and to foretel futurities is the 
peculiar characteristic of divinity — Of the knowledge 
requisite in order to prophecy— Such perfection of 
knowledge only in God. 



14 

Second — Every prophet as such is entitled to respect^ 
and every religion supported by prophecy is divine, 

No reasonableness, or excellence of any doctrine, a 
conclusive argument of divine inspiration, if not sup- 
ported by miracles performed, or prophecies fulfilled 
— Peculiarity in the circumstances of the Jewish pro- 
phets—Wisdom of that peculiarity — No credit to be 
derived from it by pretenders to prophecy, under 
any other dispensation — Ample proof of the truth of 
Christianity, both from miracles and prophecy — No 
doctrine, therefore, or institution, deserving of credit, 
but so far as they concur with the Gospel of Christ— 
Our obligations to obey its injunctions — Admonitions 
so to do — Its importance in life, and in death. ...P. 37 

DISCOURSE THIRD. 

That whatever view is taken of the doctrine of the 
text, it amounts to a positive assertion of the universal 
agency and providence of God — General design of 
the ensuing discourses — 

I. To give some idea of the government of God with 
respect both to its nature and its extent. 

II. To state some of the reasons by which this doctrine 
is supported. 

III. To inquire what influence it ought to have upon our 
temper and our conduct. 

What is meant by the providence of God— What that 
doctrine affirms, and what it denies — That this govern- 
ment of God extends to all— *To animate, inanimate, 
sensible, intelligent, and moral beings— In what man- 
ner it extends to them— Observations deducible from 
the first general head ; 



15 

1. That what we call evil, as well as good, proceeds 
from God — This deducible from the observation of 
many facts known to take place in the phenomena of 
nature, and from observing what takes place in social 
life— Moreover, pain and pleasure rise not only from 
the same constitution of nature, but even from the 
same event — Good springs out of evil — Calamities 
and pains not unworthy to proceed from God — The 
very principles from which these evils flow, necessary 
to secure our blessings— General inference,.., Page 51 



DISCOURSE FOURTH, 

Second Observation from the first general 
mead. — That though the sceptre of God extendetli 
to all, and his providence is exercised over every 
creature, yet every different species of beings is ruled 
by different laws, and all according to their respective 
natures. 

What is meant by this assertion — The principles un- 
folded on which the government of God appears to 
be carried on—Over the material, the sensible, the 
intelligent and moral worlds— Illustration of this 
doctrine — Shown that the government of God inter- 
feres not with the accountableness of man — That 
whatever is done voluntarily, is done morally— In 
what the merit or demerit of any action consists- 
Illustrated at large — The distinguishing character- 
istics of every different species of being left entire and 
unviolated — Not wonderful if some of these notions 
should appear difficult — Use to be made of such 
inquiries,..,,,.. .,„,.,, ..Page 63 



16 



DISCOURSE FIFTH. 

Third Observation. — As the government of God 
is accommodated to the different nature of his dif- 
ferent creatures, so also is it adapted to the various 
circumstances and tempers of individuals — The divine 
government wise and good — No argument against this, 
that in some instances we may not be able to perceive 
that wisdom and goodness— The divine government 
adapted to the circumstances and tempers of individuals 
deduced from what we see to be wise in the conduct 
of men towards each other — A mental as well as bodily 
constitution, the same mode of treatment, therefore, 
no more suitable to all in the one case, than the same 
medicine to all in the other — This illustrated — Con- 
clusion drawn in respect to this accommodation of 
the government of God to the temper and character 
of individuals, from that of a wise and good father of 
a family— From the impossibility of all being formed 
to virtue and happiness by the same means — Im- 
portant ends answered by a great diversity of cha- 
racter in a state of discipline — The tendency of con- 
trary propensities to correct each other, by mingling 
in society — These contrary propensities give occasion 
to many virtues— Illustration of this in a variety 
of supposable cases — In the actual cases of Moses 
and Joshua, and in the case of the people of the 
Jews , .....Page 75 

DISCOURSE SIXTH. 

This subject viewed as it respects the morality of human 
actions — Not left here to fair conjectures, and pro- 
bable considerations, for God gives encouragement to 



17 

the righteous, together with the means of improve-* 
ment in virtue, and discourages the wicked, inasmuch 
as pleasure or pain (reward or punishment) is the 
sure result of certain modes of conduct — This proved 
from fact— From the amiableness of virtue, its power 
to attract our esteem and love, contrasted by its op- 
posites — God the framer of our constitution, hence 
this love of virtue and detestation of vice, one means 
by which he distinguishes between those who differ 
—Illustrated at large— The same conclusion drawn 
from the opposite effects of virtue and vice, on our 
comfort and peace of mind, our prosperity or ad- 
versity. 
Fourth Observation. — The government of God (as 
its respecis intelligent and voluntary agents) is, in 
part, carried on by the instrumentality of others — 
This exemplified in every species of authority, in all 
kinds of associations — Example — Education, &c— 
This instrumentality, however, is under the command 
of God — The influences to which men are exposed 
proceed from God — Instance in the fate of the new- 
born infant — Moreover, civil government, parental 
authority, all the social connexions, to be referred to 
the same source ., • .....Page 87 



DISCOURSE SEVENTH. 

Fifth Observation. — The government of God is 
carried on by general laws — The wisdom of this ap 
pointment, hence the advantages derived from ex- 
perience—Illustrated by seed-time and harvest, &c. 
—Regular return of seasons, &c— The same regula- 



18 

rity in the moral government of God, and the game 
wisdom conspicuous here— Illustrated in the different 
effects produced by vice and virtue, by different 
modes of education, by prayer. 

SixthObservation. — These general laws exclude not 
the possibility, or even the probability, that on any 
just occasion these laws may be suspended. 

The same authority that enacts, can repeal — There is 
nothing contradictory in the idea of a miracle ; on the 
contrary, there are strong presumptions in favour of 
the belief, that upon just occasions, such interposi- 
tions may take place — Nothing in the nature of a 
miracle that renders it incapable of evidence. 

Seventh Observation — In regard to practical 
consequences it is the same, whether every event 
takes place in consequence of a pre-established order, 
or from the successive commands or operations of 
God — Illustrated at large, particularly in the case of 
prayer — Exhortation to study the divine govern- 
ment ,,,,...,,,,,,.... .m Page 99 



DISCOURSE EIGHTH. 

Second general head, viz. — Reasons by which the 
doctrine of the government of God is supported. 

These Discourses being addressed to Christians, are not 
intended so much for conviction as for confirmation — 
Necessity of this — Great importance of the subject- 
Use of those trying events to confirm our faith, which 
at first may seem to endanger it — Our faith in the 
providence and government of God— The advantage 
of sseing that reason and Scripture mutually confirm 
this doctrine* 



19 

First Observation.— The government of God might 
be inferred, probably, from the consideration of his 
natural perfections — From his being a Spirit — An 
omnipresent Spirit — From the divine wisdom. 

Second. — The same may be inferred from the relations 
which God bears unto the world as the Creator and 
the Father of it — Every being deriving from God its 
existence and its powers must be dependent upon him — 
God must have had some motive forthis creative exer- 
tion of his power — Whatever motive led him to create* 
the same would lead him to preserve the beings he has 
created — Illustrated by the solicitude of the artist — by 
the solicitude of a parent — The principles here rea- 
soned upon, the same which Christ assumed on a 
similar occasion— The powers of attraction and repul- 
sion not inherent, but impressed— -Not a property, but 
a force — Clear first, that the inanimate creation de- 
pends on God — Then the connexion shown between 
the inanimate, spiritual, sensible, intellectual, and 
moral worlds — Inference to be deduced, that whoever 
has the government ©f the one, must also have the 
government of the other — Exhortation! to trust in God, 
and to resignation to his will — Conclusion, ••• P. 109 



DISCOURSE NINTH. 

Third. — The very being of a revelation, a proof of the 
divine providence and government. 

A proof, whatever be the object of it, that God is not 
inattentive to the affairs of men ; and if it have the 
comfort and happiness of mankind for its object, a 
proof also, together with the government of God, of 
his benignity and goodness— A revelation must appeal 



20 

to miracles — Evidence from thence of the truth of the 
Christian revelation— of the moral government of 
God. 

Fourth.— One single prophecy verified and fulfilled 
would afford proof of the divine providence and 
government. 

The same arguments apply here as in the case of mira- 
cles — These proofs multiply in the case of a series of 
prophecies — No ground for the distinction between a 
general and a particular providence. 

Fifth — Many striking facts, that manifest the wisest 
and the kindest purposes, as well as the good order of 
the world — Instances in the ant, the stork, the crane, 
and the swallow — The same deduction from the powers 
of foresight and anticipation in men — From the pre- 
servation of every distinct species of creatures — From 
the remedies provided for diseases — From the varied 
powers, talents, and circumstances of individuals — If 
the good order of the world, at first, were not the 
effect of chance, so neither can be the continuance of 
that good order — Conclusion, practical improve- 
ment , *. Page 129 



DISCOURSE TENTH, 

The express testimony of revelation a proof of the divine 
providence and government — A brief survey of this 
doctrine as exhibited in the History contained in the 
Jewish and Christian Scriptures — Leading objects of 
the Jewish and of the Christian dispensations — Effects 
producedbyChristianityat its first appearance — Effects 
in many instances still produced— Deduction from the 



foregoing sketch, in proof of the universal providence 
and government of God — Peremptory and positive de- 
clarations to the same effect — Proofs of this adduced — 
These declarations the testimony of God concernin 
his own government — Reason and Scripture mu» 
tual friends — Exhortation to believe and obey the 
Gospel,.. •» ...Page 147 



DISCOURSE ELEVENTH. 

Recapitulation. — Third general head, viz.— * 

To inquire what influence the doctrine of the universal 
governnlent of God ought to have upon our temper, 
and our conduct — General practical improvement of 
the whole. 

FirstObservation. — How glorious an idea does this 
give of the divine excellence and majesty ! 

Of the knowledge of God — Of the wisdom of God — Of 
his power — Of his universal empire. 

Second.— If God be the great Ruler of the world, and 
govern it without interruption or control, of what in- 
finite importance is his favour !-— This truth stated in 
a variety of different views, as it respects the unlimited 
power of God — To reward or punish — To make pros- 
perous, or to involve in utter ruin — Serious exhorta- 
tion to make a friend of God . ...Page 161 



DISCOURSE TWELFTH. 

Third. — If God be the Ruler of the world, and dis- 
poses all things according to his pleasure, how strongly 
does this justify, and how loudly does this call for, all 
the duties of religion 



22 

The reasonableness of this deduced from the sentiments 
we approve in respect to excellent persons of the hu- 
man race — From what are our feelings, when we read 
what the Scriptures teach concerning the inhabitants 
of heaven — From the propriety and decency of look- 
ing beyond the gift to the giver — From the absurdity 
and ingratitude of the contrary conduct — Exhorta- 
tion — The obligation of these duties illustrated in the 
conduct we expect from our children — By what we 
see practised towards earthly superiors. 

Fourth. — If God be the Ruler of the world, &c. how 
terrible a consideration to the sinner! how comfortable 
a reflection to the righteous ! how powerful an argu- 
ment to a faithful, cheerful, and unreserved obedi- 
ence ! 

Serious admonition to sinners — Address to the righteous 
— Exhortation to persevering obedience — To thank- 
fulness of spirit.......... Page 179 

DISCOURSE THIRTEENTH. 

Fifth. — If God be a great King over all the earth, then 
we, of whatever nation, tongue or kindred, are all 
fellow subjects. 

Strictly, but one King — All mankind children of one 
family— Hence the propriety of not being high-minded 
— The duties of sympathy, compassion, and benevo- 
lence. 

Sixth. — If the world be ruled by God, &c. how reason- 
able to submit cheerfully to the present, and lay aside 
all anxiety about the future. 

The folly of discontent — The consolations on the con- 
trary that are the reward of a resigned spirit — Happy 
temper of the prophet Habakkuk— Christians under 



23 

a better dispensation—The same principles that pro* 
duce resignation at present, keep down undue anxiety 
respecting the future. 
Seventh — If the government of the world be God's, it 
is becoming at all times to maintain a humble sense of 
dependence upon him, &c. — Folly of not doing this— 
Exhortation to obedience Page 191 

DISCOURSE FOURTEENTH. 

Eighth. — If God is the supreme Ruler of all events, we 
may hope well concerning the issues of the present 
scene. 

Difficulty respecting the origin of evil — Improvements 
in science have lessened this difficulty — Probable that 
with respect to future ages, the clouds which yet hang 
upon it, may be done away — Doctrine of the Scrip- 
tures on this subject — Consolations to be derived from 
what they teach — In the eye of God, present evil 
coalesces with future good — Exhortation to patient 
endurance of present sufferings — Example of Christ 
in this particular. 

Nikth. — If the Lord God Almighty reigneth, unlimited 
obedience due unto him only. 

Rule of the Christian legislator respecting such demands 
as interfere with the demands of God— No human 
authority a right to impose articles of faith which 
Christ, the oracle of God, has not imposed— Exem- 
plary obedience recommended in matters indifferent. 

Tenth. — If God be the Sovereign of theuniverse,&c— 
Of great importance to pay serious attention to the 
current of events — From these, many lessons to be 
learnt of admonition and of consolation — A variety of 
cases enumerated,., ....... ,..,., .,,••,, .,,.,., Page 201 



S4 



DISCOURSE FIFTEENTH. 

Eleventh. — If without God nothing comes to pass, 
most important to maintain and cultivate the spirit of 
devotion. 

What is meant by the spirit of devotion. 

The interesting point of view in which the truly devout 
see the various phenomena of nature — Effects upon 
such a mind of prosperity or adversity — Of the kind- 
cess of others — Happiness of such a temper— Its con- 
formity to the doctrine of God's universal empire — 
Suitableness and propriety of it— Worldliness and dis- 
sipation enemies to its growth— Deduction thence — 
The spirit of devotion needs to be tended and culti- 
vated — Youth the best season for the acquisition of it — 
Exhortation to the young— Danger from the prejudices, 
customs, and manners of the world — What would, in 
time, be the effect of these, even where contrary 
habits are formed — Miserable state of indevoutoldage 
—Pleasures of true devotion,,..............* Page 215 



DISCOURSES* &c. 



DISCOURSE FIRST. 



Lamentations ill. 37. 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

X H E prophet's question admits of a very easy- 
answer, and comprehends in it a very strenuous 
afiirmatioii of the universal agency, and un- 
controllable providence, of God. " Who is 
cc he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when 
" the Lord coramandeth it not?" None, 
either in heaven above, or on earth beneath, 
unless there is a being derived, but not depen- 
dant ; or a power superior to the Supreme. 

All the extraordinary events of life, thos£ 
which surpass the known powers of their 
apparent causes, we ascribe without hesi- 
tinto )d ; it is only in its ordjnary oc- 
currences, in the constant tenour of its affairs. 

B 



26 

that we are unmindful of the divine govern- 
ment; and even here, if at any time we 
think of it, we are forward enough to profess 
our faith in so plain and important a doc- 
trine : in words we acknowledge it ; it is 
only in works, that we deny it. If a man 
by his words should remove mountains, or still 
the raging of the waters ; if he should recall 
the dead to life, and the dead should obey 
his voice ; if he should foretel futurities so 
dark and distant as to elude the force of all 
human penetration, and the futurity should 
precisely answer to his predictions ; we should 
conclude, without even a suspicion, that God 
was with him; and we should ascribe these 
effects to that man, only as the instrument, 
and to the great Maker of the universe, as 
the cause. In the eye of sober consideration, 
the constant current of events does as really 
proceed from God ; and the human understand- 
ing can trace up the stream to him, who is 
the sole fountain of life, of power, and of 
being. There is equal reason, why we should 
acknowledge God in the one, as in the 
other ; and we are under the same obligations 
to observe, and to receive, and to improve 
both, with reverence and godly fear. 

Yet because the one is familiar to us, and 
the other wonderful, they are received by us 



27 
with very different regards ; we stand in awe 
of those events, that come to pass but once 
in a course of ages, and acknowledge them 
to be divine ; we overlook the miracles that 
God is working in us, and around us, every- 
day. Whatever is common, we say, is na- 
tural: often we hardly know what we mean 
when we say so We receive the ordinary 
occurrences of life, with such sentiments, as 
if they were trtilv the result of chance, or the 
effects of an unintelligent fatality, and speak 
of them in such terms, as sufficiently indicate, 
that the divine agency and providence enter 
not into our common notions of them ; other- 
wise our anxieties would be composed, our 
anger would be abashed, our exultation miti- 
gated, our discontent corrected, and our grief 
restrained. We should habitually maintain a 
more steady and becoming temper ; we should 
be more justly and piously affected by every 
incident if we were habitually mindful who 
it is, that changeth the times and seasons ; 
who it is that " formeth light and createth 
darkness," that " killeth and maketh alive," 
and appointeth unto every man both his por- 
tion and his work. 

The connexion of our text, particularly the 
relation it bears to what has gone before it, is 
difficult to be ascertained ; and therefore it is 

B2 



2S 

dubious, whether the doctrine implied in the 
question is here to be understood in its whole 
extent, as relating to all the operations of 
God, both natural and supernatural, or only 
in a limited acceptation, as referring to some 
extraordinary agency of God. The latter 
appears to me to be the truth ; yet not so 
indisputably, but that much may be urged in 
favour of the former. I shall briefly show you 
how the matter stands upon each of these 
principles* 

Not foretelling future evils, but bewailing, 
as I apprehend, the present calamities of him- 
self, and of his country, the prophet, having 
pathetically described their deep afflictions, 
passes on to those thoughts of consolation, 
which, in the midst of so much sorrow, were 
needful to preserve them from despair.^ He 
calls to mind, that the stroke of Providence 
is lighter than their sins; that yet, in the 
midst of judgment, God remembers mercy; 
they had chosen him for their portion, and 
therefore might hope in his pity; that the 
Lord is good to those who dutifully seek his 



* In order to enter completely into the deep distress of the 
afflicted prophet, we should bear in mind the dreadful suffer- 
ings he had personally undergone, (Jer. xxxviii. 6.) the total 
destruction of the city and temple, and the subsequent captivity 
of the people in Babylon. Editor. 



S9 

favour, and patiently wait for it ; that afflic- 
tions are kind in their intention, and profit- 
able in their effects ; that the chastisements 
of the Lord are not boundless, though his 
compassions are ; and that he does not wii~ 
lingly afflict, or grieve the children of men. 

Perplexity is natural to excess of grief: 
these thoughts of comfort, while the prophet 
is pursuing them, become themselves, for a 
moment at least, the means of interrupting 
his comfort, and of renewing his distress. 
His consolation proceeded from the provi- 
dence of God ; and yet, in the end, the sor- 
rows, which hereby he seeks to sooth, da 
themselves rise up into an objection against 
that consolatory doctrine. To crush under 
foot all the prisoners of the earth ; to lead 
his people captive, and to tread these captives 
under foot ; to turn away the right of a man 
before the face of the Most High ; in the 
courts of judicature, and under the colour of 
justice, to pervert judgment, and sanctify 
oppression ; to subvert a man in his cause, by 
fraud, or perjury, or false witness, or by any 
other means to undermine the foundations of 
right and property, the Lord approveth not ; 
literally, and more justly, the Lord seeth not ; 
the Lord looketh not on these instances of 
iniquity. For, can it .be supposed that he 

B 3 



80 

observes what passes upon earth, and yet, 
holy as he is, permits it to be defiled with 
such wickedness ? Can it be supposed that he 
interests himself in the affairs of men, and 
yet, compassionate as he is, permits such 
cruelties to triumph? Has he any pleasure in 
the calamities, has he any complacency in the 
iniquities of his creatures ? Does he rule the 
world for no other purpose, but to make the 
sins of one half a plague to the other half 
of its inhabitants ? How shall these difficulties 
be solved? How fair a presumption do they 
afford, that the Lord knoweth not, or regard- 
eth not, what passeth upon earth ? 

Faith, founded upon just principles, though 
for a moment it may fail ; though the suspi- 
cions that arise from within, or the cavils tbat 
are objected to it from without, may cause it 
for a little while to stagger, yet will speedily 
recover itself, or be restored by him, M who 
jaiseth up those that be bowed down." And 
thus you see, whether these difficulties in the 
divine dispensations were, for the time, the 
real thoughts of his own heart, or whether 
you consider the prophet as stating the ob- 
jection, that he might answer it for the service 
of his countrymen ; he instantly returns to a 
more dutiful and pious strain, and dwells upon 
those considerations, which must be satisfac* 



31 

tory to his own soul, and convincing to his 
brethren. 

No argument can be drawn from the pre- 
sent calamities of their country against the 
providence of God ; for, in our text he pro- 
ceeds, and with an air of triumph and in- 
dignation, against thoughts so unworthy of 
the divine character and perfections, he asks, 
" Who is he that saith, and it cometh to 
" pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?' 7 
' Thinkest thou, my heart, or say ye, my 
' countrymen, that God does not know or 

* regard the affairs of men? Ye bewail your 
s situation as forlorn and desperate, over- 

* looked and abandoned by the great Lord of 
' all. Do you think, that these things happen 

* without his notice, or appointment?' "Who 
M is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when 
" the Lord commandeth it not?" That is, 
c On what principle can ye account for the 

* predictions, that w r ere from time to time 
' imparted to you, concerning the calamities 
' under which ye now labour, wherein they 
■ were so clearly, and so perfectly described? 
4 If God did not dictate the prediction, if God 
' did not give it its accomplishment, whence 
' was it, that, at the distance of so many years, 

* the events should so exactly correspond unto 
' the prophecy ? What am I ? Have I saga- 

B4 



32 

* city to foresee what is to come? Have 1 

* power to make good what I rashly uttered? 
c Was it by my own penetration that I dived 
6 into the secrets of futurity ? Was it by my 

* own foreknowledge that I warned yon of a 

* storm, which, as yet, was not even gathering 

* inChaldea?* Whence was it that the reveries 
' of my vain imagination should be so com- 
6 pletely realized ? or what efficacy could the 
' presumptuous effusions of my folly have to 
6 bring upon you so precisely the calamities, 

* with which, in the name of God, I threaten- 

* ed you ? Had not God revealed them to me, 

< what could I have known of the things that 

* should be hereafter? Had not God inspired 
6 me, what durst I have said of the future de- 

* solations of my country ? Had not God com- 
6 manded it, these things had never come to 
4 pass: the events would have falsified my 
6 words, and exposed me at once to your i-n- 
1 dignation, and to death. Doubt now, if 

< you can, whether this distress is come upon 

< you without the knowledge and appoint- 
6 ment of the Lord. Doubt now, if you can, 
' whether he observes, or interests himself in 
' the affairs of men : and think, whether it be 
\ not some consolation of our sorrows^ that 

* Jfcr. vii. viii. ix> 



§3 

e they are not without the privity and per- 
\ mission of our God. He knows them, for he 
f foretold them ; the events have answered to 
€ his predictions ; the events, therefore, were 
6 at least under his dominion and control.' 

Such seems to me to be the sense of our 
text ; such the relation that it bears to the 
passage where we find it ; and such the man- 
ner in which it may, with most justice and 
propriety, be illustrated. 

It may, however, be considered, as we 
observed to you, in another view, corre- 
sponding well enough with its connexion ; it 
may be considered as having no particular 
reference to any supernatural operations of 
God, either in the revelation of future events, 
or in the accomplishment of those predicted ; 
but, as containing in it a general affirmation 
of his universal agency and dominion ; as an 
assertion that nothing comes to pass through 
the will of man, unless the will of God concur 
with it. In this view, remembering that the 
prophet has been bewailing the calamities 
of Jerusalem, and afterwards taking comfort 
from the consideration of God's providence 
and mercy ; we must also call to mind, that 
it occurred to him as a difficulty, or is re- 
presented by him as the objection of another 
to this reviving doctrine, that the wickedness 

B 5 



34 

of some should be the cause of so much 
misery to others: a consideration which, as 
it is intimated, seemed to invite to this con- 
clusion) that the Lord seeth not, or regardeth 
not the affairs of men. 

To this the prophet answers in the words 
of our text: " Who is he that saitb, and it 
" cometh to pass, when the Lord com- 
" mandeth it not ?" c Who is he that can 
c frustrate the will of God ; or accomplish his 
i own purposes, in opposition to the divine ? 
4 Who is he that can make good any thing 

* that his lips have uttered, or his heart con- 
4 ceived, if he derive not both the permission 

* and the power from God? If God has com- 
4 manded otherwise, in vain will he attempt 
' to fulfil his word, or effectuate his thoughts. 

* If God has not commanded that they should 

* be accomplished, accomplished they never 
4 will be. No man but himself shall be the 

* better for then), if they be good ; none but 
1 himself the worse for them, if they be evil. 

* God is the original fountain of being, and 
4 of power ; and he also is the perpetual sup- 

* porter of it. Derived from him at first, 

* the efficacy of every other cause, the ability 
4 of every other agent, the existence of every 
4 creature, are continually dependant on his 

* pleasure j they act but as he furnishes them 



35 

* with the opportunity, and the power of 
' action ; and they live from one moment to 
c another, but as he supplies the means of 
c life. Can any of you boast an independent 
6 being, and by his own will prolong his life 

< until the morrow? Why then do you ever 
f die ? Can any of you, by his own will, by 
fr all his prudence, joined with all his reso- 
c lution, protract his health until the evening? 
' Why then do you ever languish ? Can any 
' of you, when he undertaketh an enterprise, 
' by the effect of his own most forcible 

* volition, by his steadiest determination 
6 joined to his acutest skill, ensure success 
1 unto himself? Why then are you ever dis- 

* appointed ? — It is because the concurrence 
c of God is necessary to accomplish your, rie- 

* terminations, and to give efficacy to your 
1 volitions, that you say, and it cometh not to 
4 pass, because the Lord commandeth it not. 
4 The divine permission and concurrence are 
' necessary unto every change that takes 

* place among his creatures : conclude not 

< tben, my countrymen ; suspect not then, 
' my soul, that because w T e are led captive, 
c and trodden under foot ; that because justice 
( is perverted in our cause, and we are sup^ 
c planted in our rights ; conclude not hence^ 
c that God sees not, and regards not what 

B6 



36 

6 passes upon earth. Chaldea had never 
' triumphed, if God had not given her the 

* power; and however the Babylonish mon- 
' arch may boast of his omnipotence, not 
' all his armies could have led captive 1 one 
' single Jew, if the Lord had not commanded 
6 it. It is the Lord's doing ; as such, let us 
fc humbly, piously, and penitentially acknow- 
c ledge it. Our afflictions, as well as our 
6 blessings, come from God: whatever be the 
6 means and instruments, the cause and author 

* of them is in heaven. As he ordains and 
6 speaks, what we call good, or evil, followeth. 
6 In the severest trials, he leaves us far more 
c than we have merited. In his highest dis- 
6 pleasure, we are not without the means of 
c reconciliation : in his hottest indignation, 

* we are not without hope in, his mercy. Let 

* us take then, the counsels of his providence, 
i and embrace the consolations it affords; for 
< ft Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass,. 
6 4i when the Lord commandeth it not ?" ? 



DISCOURSE SECOND, 



Lamentations iii. 3% 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS? 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

-Tor the better improvement of this subject*, 
we might now proceed to confirm the doctrine 
of the text, by considering in general, what 
reason teaches, and what Scripture superadds 
unto her teachings, concerning ihe providence 
and government of God : and hence w T e might 
pass on to inquire, what influence such a doc* 
trine ought to have upon the temper of our 
hearts, and the conduct of our lives. But 
these are topics, which it is my intention 
to discuss more at large, in some future dis* 
courses on this text ; at present I shall confine 
myself to the following reflections. 

1. From w r hat you have already heard, we 
are naturally led to observe, that to foreknow*, 
and to foretel futurities, is a proper and pecu- 
liar characteristic of divinity. 



It is the prerogative of God. It is as much 
beyond the power of an uninspired mortal to 
discover, as it is beside his duty, curiously to 
pry into, what shall be hereafter. The know- 
ledge of futurity must proceed from one of 
the following principles, or both : it must 
arise from a clear and complete survey of all 
the causes which are at present subsisting in 
the universe ; from the perfect knowledge of 
their strength and efficacy ; and an infallible 
discernment of the effects that will result from 
their combination or opposition ; or, it must 
have for its foundation the power of control- 
ling all causes, and regulating all events ; and 
a steady determination, that, at any rate, and 
by any means, natural, if it may be, or super- 
natural, if that be necessary, the event fore- 
told shall be brought to pass according to the 
circumstances of the prediction. Without 
one, or both of these pre-requisites, there can 
be no foreknowledge ; and witboutprescience, 
there is no prophecy. But in whom can such 
perfection dwell except in him to whom all 
excellency belongeth ? Who can comprehend 
the universe^ or understand its tendencies but 
he who gave it its immeasurable extent, and 
blended in it so many various principles? Or 
who can engage for any distant issue, but he ? 
who having all the powers of nature in his 



m 

hands, can direct, impel, restrain, suspend? 
and counteract them, as he pleasetfa ? " Who 
" has known the mind of the Lard, or who has 
" been his counsellor ?" 

It is with the most perfect propriety, there- 
fore, that the Scriptures always represent this? 
as a peculiar attribute of God; and describe 
the great Ruler of the world^as he " who alone 
" declareth the former things, and showeth 
" the things that must be hereafter ; who pro- 
M nounceth the end from the beginning, and 
" from ancient times the things that are not 
" yet done : who revealeth secret things, and 
" maketh known what shall be in the latter 
" days." 

It is with the greatest justice that they re- 
present the one living and true God, as chal- 
lenging those vanities, which the Gentiles 
called gods, to produce this proof of their 
divinity. " Let them bring forth, saith the 
" Lord, and show us what shall happen ; let 
" them show the former things what they be, 
" and declare to us things to come ; let them 
" show the things that are to come hereafter, 
u that we may know that they are Gods." — » 
Prophecy, therefore, is the gift of God; and 
prescience, a characteristic of divinity : a doc- 
trine of the greatest importance, and which 
is clearly contained in. the words of our text, 



40 

whether interpreted in its more limited, or in 
its more extensive acceptation. " Who is he 
" that saith, and it cometh to pass, when 
" the Lord commandeth it not ?" Hence it 
follows, 

2. That every prophet is entitled to the 
honour and obedience of those among whom 
be prophecies ; and that every religion sup- 
ported by prophecy, is divine. 

What is a prophet ? The oracle of God. 
And every thing that pretends, (if the preten- 
sion be not manifestly absurd,) to come from 
God, commands our attention and inquiry. 
Every thing that does really come from God 
calls forth our profoundest reverence and most 
absolute submission. If God speaketh to us, 
it becometh us, it behoveth us, to hear. To, 
whom do we owe a more serious regard, than 
to him who endued us with the power of at- 
tention ? Or from whom can we expect more 
important communications, than from him, 
whose we are ; who has our fate in his hands, 
and who created us, that we might be happy?* 
If he give us information, it is that we may be 
guided by his light: if he offer us comfort, 
it is that we may be refreshed by his consola- 



* Hence the singular efficacy of those scriptures which evi- 
dently bear upon them the sacred impress of divine authority^ 
to reform the conduct, and to purify the heart. Editor* 



41 

tions : if he lay his commands upon us, it is 
that we may do hi& will. In these services^ 
whatever instruments he employs, however 
mean their talents and obscure their circum- 
stances, they become respectable by the em- 
ployment : that God honours them as his 
ministers and messengers, lays a sufficient 
claim to our honour and esteem. They have 
but to produce the evidence of their divine 
commission, "or of the divine presence with 
them, and they have perfectly demonstrated our 
obligation to believe them, and obey them. 

But, as no miracle performed, or prophecy 
fulfilled, if any such could appear in his be- 
half, can support his authority, whose doe- 
trine is immoral or absurd ; so no reasonable- 
ness, no excellence of doctrine, can be ad- 
mitted as a conclusive argument of divine in- 
spiration and authority, unless its pretensions 
be attested by miracles performed, or pro- 
phecies fulfilled. Do you say of any doc- 
trine, that it is reasonable and excellent ? I 
am ready to admit this to be a fair presump- 
tion that it may be dictated by heaven ; so 
far as I discern that reasonableness, and that 
excellence, I shall apply the doctrine, and 
esteem the teacher ; beyond this I cannot go ; 
beyond this I dare not trust myself. I may 
follow God implicitly. If I know that it is 



42 

he who leads me, I may proceed with con- 
fidence in the way, though I see not whither 
I am going. 

If to the general reasonableness and ex- 
cellence of the doctrine, you superadd the 
evidence of miracles, or appeal to the accom- 
plishment of prophecies, for the establish- 
ment of your authority, this removes what- 
ever doubt or difficulty may have arisen in my 
mind ; thenceforth J regard you, not merely 
as a wise man, but as a prophet; and reve- 
rence your doctrine and injunctions, not as 
your own word, but as the word of God who 
sent you. Utter a prediction, and I will wait 
for its accomplishment ; and, " if you say, and 
" it cometh to pass," I shall conclude, that 
the Lord commanded you to prophecy, and 
shall receive the doctrine, in confirmation of 
which you appeal to your prophetic spirit, 
with the full assurance of faith. Work a 
miracle, and I will believe whatever predic- 
tions you shall utter ; and rely on the event 
with the most perfect confidence. 

With respect to Jewish prophets, there was 
a peculiar circumstance that gave them some 
little credibility and authority, antecedent to 
any miracle they wrought in pledge of their 
predictions, or to the fulfilment of any pro- 
phecy, in proof of their divine commission. 



m 

It is expressly written in the law, " The pro- 
" phet who shall presume to speak a word in 
" my name, which I have not commanded him 
" to speak, even that prophet shall die." And 
that there might remain no doubt among his 
judges, whether any man had become ob- 
noxious to this sentence, the word which God 
commanded not to speak, is immediately ex- 
plained; and such a criterion given them, to 
distinguish between the prophet of the Lord, 
and the false prophet, as could not be mis- 
taken. " And if thou say in thy heart," adds 
the law, " how shall we know the word that 
" the Lord hath spoken ? When a prophet 
" speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing 
" follow not, nor come to pass, that is the 
" thing which the Lord hath not spoken, the 
" prophet hath spoken it presumptuously, thou 
" shalt not be afraid of him ;"* i.e. thoushalt 
not fear his threatenings, or by any thing that 
he shall denounce upon thee, be deterred from 
executing on him the sentence of the law. 

When we consider the large share that pro- 
phecy was to have in the Jewish dispensation, 
and the intimate connexion it was to hold with, 
their civil, as well as with their spiritual in- 
terests ; when we consider what temptations 
would arise to invite the delusions of the am- 

*Deut,xviii. 20,21,22. 



44 

bilious and unprincipled, and to encourage the 
workings of enthusiasm in the vain and ig- 
norant, we must see the equity, and admire 
the wisdom of this law, which so powerfully- 
tended to preserve the people from the seduc- 
tion of false pretenders, and to enforce their 
regards to those prophets who addressed them 
by the command of God ; for surely nothing 
could be more effectual to repress every de-* 
claration concerning what was to come which 
it was in the power of man to repress. When 
he knew that he must answer with his life for 
the event, whatever a man might think, he 
w T ould be cautious how he spake ; and it might 
probably be concluded, that whatever pro- 
phecy was in these circumstances uttered, 
w r as uttered because it could not be withheld ; 
because it was forced from the prophet, by 
the irresistible impulse of the inspiring God. 

But whatever authority Jewish prophets 
might derive, and some they would naturally 
and reasonably derive from this circumstance; 
under any other dispensation, no man can 
warrantably demand credit to his predictions, 
or assume authority on the pretence of- inspi- 
ration, till he can produce some certain mi- 
racle for his voucher, or appeal to the fulfil- 
ment of some prophecy, as the seal of his 
divine commission. If he only bears witness 



of himself, his witness is not true ; all his 
pretensions to inspiration, if they be not piti- 
able, are detestable ; if he believes them him- 
self, he is frantic ; if he believes them not, he 
is wicked; for they must be either the visions 
of a wild imagination, or the impositions of 
hypocrisy, impudence, and fraud. If his vain 
babblings were the suggestions of the spirit 
of God, why does he not produce his creden- 
tials? He has no prophecies to support him ? 
these are the signatures, and they are the only 
credible signatures of divine authority: where- 
ever they are wanting, (and wanting to such 
they will ever be,) no doctrine, no declaration, 
no precept, no institution of religion, ought 
to have any authority or credit, but so far 
only as they concur with the gospel of Christ. 
This is the word of God, divinely authorized 
and attested. It began to be spoken by the 
Lord himself, upon whom the spirit of God 
descended at his baptism, was confirmed by 
them that heard him, God himself bearing 
witness with signs and wonders and divers 
miracles and gifts of the holy spirit Pro- 
phecy is the gift of God, for prescience is the 
characteristic of the godhead ; wherever there 
is prescience, there is God. And, whatever 
can appeal to prophecy, to declare its origin 
and its author, challenges our faith, and gives 



us perfect security in believing ; for it is clearly 
and incontestibly divine. 

On these principles we may receive the 
Gospel safely.; we cannot safely neglect it; 
we are under every obligation which the at- 
testation and command of God can lay upon 
us, both to receive and honour it. It is it- 
self the accomplishment of numerous prophe- 
cies that began in the early ages of the w^orld, 
and preceded its publication through a long 
succession of ages, at least more than two 
thousand years. Its author was eminently 
possessed of the prophetic spirit ; he foretold 
his death, and the manner of his death. — 
Though it was not improbable that he should 
be put to death, yet the circumstances of his 
death were, in many respects, exceedingly 
improbable ; yet improbable as they were, as 
he said, so it came to pass : he foretold his 
resurrection from the dead ; and, at the time he 
specified, he rose : he foretold his ascension to 
the Father, and he was visibly taken up to- 
wards heaven : he foretold the descent of the 
holy spirit, and the holy spirit, according to 
his promise, took possession of his disciples: 
he foretold many other great events that lite- 
rally corresponded to his prophecies. 

The prophetic spirit passed from him to 
his disciples. The rapid progress^ the vast 



4T 

extent, the cruel persecution, the dreadful 
corruption of his Gospel, had all been fore- 
told either by the Master or his followers ; 
and the event exactly verified their words. 
The present circumstances of that people 
among whom he fulfilled his ministry, and 
to whom he foretold their doom, scattered 
among all nations, yet from all nations dis- 
tinct and separate, are, at this day, a living 
demonstration, that as he received of the 
Father^ so Jesus spake; and a faithful pledge, 
that ?:* though the heavens and the earth should 
" pass away, his words shall not pass away 
« until all be fulfilled." * 

Believing, therefore, the terrors of the 
Lord, let us flee from the wrath that is to 
come ; and seeing that there are given unto 
us, through Jesus Christ*, promises so exceed- 
ingly great and precious, so immutably sure 
and certain, let us cleanse ourselves from all 
pollution both of flesh and spirit, and perfect 
holiness in the fear of God. Since the Gos- 
pel is so worthy of all acceptation, let us bold 
fast the profession of our faith without waver- 



* See a very striking outline of the state of the Jews, com- 
piled from the most authentic records of that extraordinary 
people, from the period of their return from the Babylonian 
captivity, to the 19th century, by Hannah Adams. Boston^ 
Massachusets, 1812. Editor. 



45 

ing ; and if any man ask a reason of the hope 
that is in us, let us show him how all these 
things, that are the objects of our faith, were 
spoken of from ancient times, and in the ful- 
ness of time accomplished, and then let us 
ask him, in the words of our text, " Who is 
" he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when 
" the Lord commandeth it not?" Steadfast in 
the faith, let this be the invariable principle of 
our conduct : "the life that we now live in the 
" flesh, let it be by the faith of the Son of God/' 
To confess with our tongues unto the Lord, 
while in our temper and our practice we deny 
him, will avail little to promote his honour 
among men, and less to promote our interest 
with God. Faith, if it do not sanctify, can- 
not save ; if our characters be not the better 
for it while we live, our fate will be the worse 
for it when we die. It is one article of our 
faith, that if we die in our sins, we perish ; it 
is another, that if we repent, we shall be for- 
given ; it is another, that without holiness no 
man can see God ; it is another, that God will 
not leave or forsake those who forsake not him ; 
it is another, that they who, by patient conti- 
nuance in well doing, seek for glory, honour, 
and immortality, shall obtain eternal life. 

May these sacred truths be deeply engravea 
on our minds, and may our hearts be for ever 

\ 



49 

open to their blessed influences. Let us re- 
sign all our souls to Chnst and to his Gospel ; 
let us, according to ou>* respective eharacters, 
faithfully apply his salutary maxims. Let the 
wicked be warned by its prophetic admoni- 
tion; let the penitent be revived \. f] con- 
solations that it offers him; lei the weak be 
encouraged by the power o" Mm :\\ey erve ; 
let the confirmed Christian • - ice in hope of 
the glory of God. Let us prize these sacred 
oracles according to the value of the gift and 
the dignity of the giver. Let us improve them 
according to the greatness of the talent, and 
the strictness of our account As we wish that 
in death they may furnish us with those nvely 
hopes that shall be the steady anchor of our 
souls, let us steer our course through life by 
their counsel and direction. As we are to be 
tried by them, let us walk by them. As our 
faith must be proved by their doctrine, let this 
be the standard to regulate our belief As our 
characters must be examined by their laws, 
let these be the standard to regulate our man- 
ners. If we wish to be sanctified, let us seek 
our sanctification through the trtith of Godc 
If we hope to be saved, let us work oul our 
salvation in the way, and by the means 'hat 
he hath appointed. Let us cherish a lively 
faith, and cultivate a growing knowledge in 

C 



59 

those Scriptures in which we think we have 
eternal life. Let us hide them in our hearts, 
and pray to God to impress them there, that 
we may not sin against him. Since we pro- 
fess ourselves believers, and have so much 
reason to justify our faith ; since we profess 
ourselves to be interested in the honour of the 
Gospel, and have so much reason to justify 
our concern for its reputation and success, let 
us labour that the word of Christ, like a foun- 
tain of living water, " may dwell richly in us 
" in all wisdom," and flow liberally from us in 
all holy conversation and godliness. 



DISCOURSE THIKD. 



Lamentations iii. 37. 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WHE& 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

1 H E doctrine comprehended in these words, 
is the universal agency and providence of 
God. Whatever interpretation be given to 
our text, this doctrine necessarily results from 
it. If you consider the prophet as saying, 

* Who is he that saith, that promises, that 
c commands, that undertakes, and it cometh 

* to pass, when the Lord commandeth not?* 
This is equivalent to a direct assertion of God's 
agency and providence. If you consider these 
words as restrained by their connexion to 
prophetic inspiration, and conceive the sense 
of them to be, f Who is he that is able to fore- 

* tel what the event shall verify, when the 
e Lord commandeth it not?' this is equivalent 
t© a direct assertion, that no man can pro* 

C2 



m 

phecy but by divine inspiration, which evi* 
dently contains in it another assertion, viz. that 
futurity is known to God ; that he can answer 
for the arrival of whatever event he pleaseth, 
and by consequence, since the future is de- 
pendent on the present, that the present at 
all times passeth under his notice, and is sub- 
ject to his control. Unless it be given him in 
command from God, no man can speak truly 
of futurity; and if any man has spoken truly 
of futurity, it was because God commanded 
the events to concur with his predictions. — 
Thus in any view, you see, our text asserts 
the providence and government of God* 

In discoursing upon this subject, we shall 
endeavour, 

1. To give you some idea of this govern- 

ment with respect both to its nature 
and extent ; i. e. to explain to you 
what we mean by the government of 
God. 

2. We shall mention to you some of the 

reasons by which this doctrine is sup- 
ported ; and having established the 
fact, we shall proceed, 

3. To inquire what influence it ought to 

have upon our temper and our conduct. 
To return. Whatever difficulties may at- 
tend the application of the doctrine of the 



government of God in particular instances, or 
whatever doubts or perplexities may arise on 
some incidental questions that are connected 
with this subject, the general notion of a 
divine providence is very clear in the con- 
ception, and very certain in its evidence. 

By the providence of God we understand 
the care he exercises over all his creatures to 
preserve them in being so long as he thinks 
fit, and to supply them during that term, with 
all things necessary to their preservation; 
to put a period to their existence when it 
seemeth to him good, and, to this end, to 
order and direct the means of their dissolu- 
tion ; to fix, to multiply, or diminish their 
number, according to his will ; to appoint, to 
continue, and to change their circumstances, 
according to his pleasure. 

When we assert the divine providence, we 
deny on the one hand, that any thing comes 
to pass by chance or accident ; i. e. without 
the knowledge, or beside the purpose of God ; 
we deny on the other hand, that any thing 
takes place, through I know not what fata- 
lity, whether it be contrary to the divine will, 
and uncontrollable by his power; or whether, 
being agreeable to his pleasure, it be the 
effect of a necessity that proceeds not from 
his determination. We deny that the world 

C 3 



54 

is abandoned without order, rule, or end; w* 
affirm, that whatever be at any time its order, 
it is precisely what God wills it should be ; 
and that whatever be its end, the divine plea- 
sure will therein be perfectly accomplished ; 
that all things harmoniously conspire and 
work together, to fulfil his purpose ; and that, 
in the mean time, every intermediate opera- 
tion and effect follows his direction, and exe- 
cutes his design. We deny that the world is 
like a ship, whose rudder is broken, and its 
pilot drowned, moving but at random, and 
changing its situation, but without design ; 
we affiirn, that the divine intelligence regu- 
lateth all the motions of the universe, and 
that, by all its motions, the divine purposes 
are promoted. We deny, that the world is 
like a state, whose Ruler has abdicated the 
kingdom, and left the jarring passions, and 
capricious humours of his subjects, without 
guidance or restraint ; we affirm, that the 
world never is, or can be, in anarchy or con- 
fusion ; that no. will of man, or any other being, 
can defeat the will of God ; that their aims 
can prevail no farther than as they concur 
with his designs; and that, voluntarily to their 
honour, if they be good, they do his pleasure ; 
that against their will to their shame, if they 
be wicked, they carry on his schemes. 



55 

Such is the government of God, extending 
to all inanimate, animate, sensible, intelligent 
and moral beings ; not to destroy their re- 
spective natures, but to leave them in full pos- 
session of their properties, and not suspend- 
ing, overbearing, or counteracting their re- 
spective powers, but guiding, managing, and 
employing them in his service: so proper* 
tioning their degrees of strength, of vigour, 
regulating their mutual influences and rela- 
tions, and restraining or enlarging their effects 
and consequences, as to make them all the 
ministers of his pleasure, the executors of his 
counsels, the instruments of accomplishing 
the ends of his creation; which, if he be him- 
self perfectly good, and independently happy, 
must be to make all who are capable of good- 
ness, good ; and all whQ are capable of happi- 
ness, happy. 

To this general idea of the Divine Provi- 
dence, in order farther to explain the nature 
and extent of God's government, I would sub- 
join the following observations, viz. 

1. That what we call evil, as well as good, 
i. e. the various modes of pain, as well as of 
pleasure, proceed from God : it is the Lord's 
doing ; the result of bis will or appointment. 

It is not one being that pours out blessings 
on the world, and another that mingles evils 

C4 



56 

with those blessings : both proceed from tht 
same fountain, and flow together in the same 
stream. One thing is clear, that if God be 
the author of our pleasures, he is likewise the 
author of our pains. The same constitution 
of nature tnat makes us capable of pleasure, 
exposes us to pain. Take away the capacity 
of pain, and with that you destroy the capa- 
city of pleasure: reduce any 6f your senses 
to such a state that you can occasionally suffer 
nothing from them, and they will, at the same 
time, be reduced to such a state, that they 
shall afford you no enjoyment. The same 
course of nature around us, which furnishes 
us with the materials of pleasure, throws into 
our way the occasions and the causes of pain. 
The same storm tha* purifies the air, and con- 
tributes to our health, puts us in fear for the 
security of our dwellings ; the same agita- 
tions of the water that prevent its putrefac- 
tion, and assist our commerce, wreck our ves- 
sels on the strand, make inroads on our terri- 
tories, and wash away our cattle or our lands. 
The succession of day and night, the vicissi- 
tudes of the seasons, in themselves so agree- 
able, in their effects so delightful ; the one so 
necessary for our repose, and to refit us for 
our labour ; the other so necessary to fertilize 
the earth, and to bring to maturity its various 



57 

productions ; both so necessary to the equal 
distribution of God's blessings to all nations, 
and to all climates, are, in innumerable in- 
stances, through the concurrence of that igno- 
rance of futurity, which is the security of our 
peace and comfort, the causes of pain, of sick- 
ness, and of death. 

So also in the moral world, by the same 
constitution of nature by which the compa- 
nion of the wise groweth wise, the companion 
of fools is destroyed : through the same prin- 
ciples by which virtue is transfused as it were 
by virtuous associations, vice also is con-? 
tagious. By the same principles of imitation 
through which we learn to speak at all, we 
may learn to speak evil of our neighbour, and 
to take the name of God in vain. The very 
same connexions that are useful, and even 
necessary to teach us wisdom, prudence, 
piety, humanity, and many other graces the 
ornament and delight of man, may, and will 
be the means, in some instances, of giting 
error something of the authority of truth, and 
folly something of the agreeableness of virtue, 
through the present imperfection of human 
nature, which is not in any individual to be 
found unperverted, or unblemished, In ne- 
cessity it will pain us as much to ask, as it re~ 
joices us to receive i and when others require 

C5 



58 

©ur help, we are first pained it may be, by their 
distresses, before we are delighted in relieving 
them. The rose, which, while it charms us with 
its fragrance -and its beauty, may perchance 
wound us by the very means which nature has 
provided for its preservation, is itself an in- 
stance, in the natural world, of pain and plea- 
sure united in, and proceeding from the same 
cause ; and moreover, will be acknowledged, 
by those who have had experience in life, to 
be a very striking emblem of many other 
objtcts, pursuits, situations, and possessions 
in it. 

Again : Pain and pleasure rise together not 
only from the same constitution and the same 
course of nature, but even from the same 
event; which is another argument that the 
same God creates both good and evil. The 
same shower that refreshes my pasture, beats 
down, perhaps, your corn ; the same gale that 
carries me to my desired haven, drives you 
from home, and on the rock. If it be rea- 
sonable that for this I should gratefully ac- 
knowledge God, you also must impute your 
calamities unto him, and humbly own his 
sovereignty, and your dependence. 

That air which refreshes you who are in 
heaitti, would be instant death unco the sick. 
That cold which benumbs the feeble infant. 



59 

strengthens and invigorates the perfect man ; 
that heat which oppresses him, comforts and 
enlivens the decline of age. The shortness 
and preeariousness of life you reckon a cala- 
mity ; and the more exquisite its enjoyments 
are, the more you will acknowledge yourselves 
indebted for them ; yet the same cause works 
both these effects; for in those climates which 
abound most with what are ordinarily called 
the pleasures and delight^ of life, the period 
of life is shortest, and the tenure of it most 
uncertain ; it sooner reaches its maturity, it 
sooner sinks into decay, and is all along 
more liable to be instantly and suddenly cut 
off. 

But farther ; good springs out of evil, and 
pains themselves are the ministers of pleasure ; 
another argument that both are to be ascribed 
to one great Author. 

The feebleness of human infancy, our long 
dependance on the care and good will of 
others, and the injuries which, in respect both 
to our minds and bodies we are liable to con* 
tract, both from their ill judgment and neg- 
lect, have often been reckoned, among the 
evils of human life, and magnified into mighty 
difficulties against the wisdom and the good- 
ness of our Maker. In themselves, it is irue^ 
they are neither good nor pleasant, nor in an 37 

C 6 



€0 

way desirable ; but their consequences are so 
good ? that it is not for human understanding 
iv <?o Cc ve, that any other initiation into life 
couid ^ ave been more wise or kind. For in 
this is laid the foundation of all authority and 
discipline, of domestic, social, and civil peace ; 
of the good order and possession of our own 
minds. By this are tied the closest and the 
happiest bonds of communion upon earth : 
hence arise the amiable and useful senti- 
ments of filial gratitude and reverence ; and 
hence the blessing, and the blest affections, 
of parental tenderness and love : the pains 
of hunger and thirst, of weariness and watch- 
ing, have for their end the reparation and re- 
freshment of the body; the pains of heat 
and cold tend to keep it in that middle tem- 
perature which is at once most salutary and 
most delightful. Fear, if it create sorrow, 
creates precaution, and that precaution formed 
into habit, is our safety. 

A considerable part of what we call the 
evils of life consists in the fear of losing its 
enjoyments ; and another considerable part of 
Ihem consists in our sympathy with those who 
have lost them ; and the last is a principle 
which is accompanied with so much self-ap- 
probation, as soothes the pain it creates in our 
©wn hearts, while it powerfully tends to the com-, 



61 

fort and relief of others : the first is a p?i«^ 
ciple, which, if it pain, it is to bless us, to 
prolong our enjoyments by engaging us ia 
the prudent use and the^ careful preservation 
of them. 

Thus, to pass over all that might be said 
of the tendency of temporal evils to work out 
for us everlasting happiness, and the tendency 
of bodily and external ills to impart to us spi- 
ritual blessings, (i, e. blessings of & superior 
order, and of greater value,) the considerations 
that have been suggested may perhaps pre- 
vail to satisfy us, that the calamities and pains 
which we bewail so pathetically, and resent, 
perhaps, so impatiently, are not unworthy to 
proceed from the God of love, and that both 
our pleasures and our pains do, in fact, proceed 
from the same appointment and the same will* 
The same constitution of nature gives us 
the capacity of both ; the same course of na- 
ture presents us with the causes and occasions 
of both ; the same event that brings good to 
one, brings evil to another. Can there be a 
clearer proof, that if God's will and providence 
be concerned in one, it is equally concerned 
in both ? 

The very principles from which our evils 
flow are necessary to our blessings ; it is the 
jonanifest design, and the natural tendency of 



m 

those evils too, to secure, to multiply, and to 
improve our joys ; in our comforts we are 
blest ; we are blest in what we do not call 
so ; what doubt then can remain, that they 
have one author, even God? We conclude 
then as we began, that pain and pleasure, 
good and evil, have the same relation to the 
providence oi God ; that they are equally the 
effects of his will, and the subjects of his 
control. 



DISCOURSE FOURTH 



Lamentations iii, 37. 

WHO IS HE THAT SALTH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WHEN 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

Another observation I would offer to you 
on this subject, the nature and extent of the 
divine government, is this, viz. 

2. That though the sceptre of God extend* 
eth to all, and his providence is exercised 
over every creature, yet he rules every differ- 
ent species of beings by different laws, and go- 
verns all according to their respective natures. 

I MEAN in general to be understood thus ; 
viz. that in proportion, as God has coiiiffiu- 
nicated to every class of beings the power of 
governing themselves., in that proportion his 
own immediate agency upon them is in some 
sense withdrawn, except so far as is necessary 
to preserve them, in existence, to continue to 
them the exercise of their powers, to give 
efficacy to their volitions, or to control and 
regulate the effects of them, Thus, for ex- 



64 

ample, the government that God exercises 
over the material world, though not more un- 
controllable, is more immediate, and in some 
sen?e more universal than that which he ex- 
ercises over his sensible, intelligent, and moral 
creatures. 

The government of the material world 
consists in the preservation of its being and 
its form ; in the just disposition of its minuter 
particles ; in the constant support of their 
mutual relations and connexions ; in the or- 
derly production of those regular changes we 
behold in it, as well as of every other mo- 
tion, and every other alteration in it which 
peem to us irregular and variable. All here 
appears upon just principles to be altogether 
and immediately the work t>f God ; insomuch* 
that if you should ask concerning the stones 
of the field, who laid them on this,rather than 
on the other side, I could give you no other 
answer, than that it was the h^nd of God. If 
you should ask concerning the flower of the 
field, why it rose in that place at that season^ 
or why it rose at all, I could give you no other 
answer, than that it was the operation of God; 
if you ask me concerning the flying clouds, 
why they pass in this, rather than in that 
direction, I can only tell you, that it is the 
guidance of God, 



65 

Bot, on the other hand, we cannot so truly 
say of his sensible creation, that every motion 
of theirs, that every change in their situation, 
proceeded from the immediate influence and 
guidance of God; to these he has imparted 
the power of motion from themselves ; this 
supplies the place of his immediate impulse 
in the inanimate world. His agency, it is 
true, may be necessary to preserve their being 
and their powers \ but the means by which 
he governs them, and bends, as it were, the 
powers he has imparted to them to his own 
purposes, is the disposition of the material 
world without them, by which he awakens 
in them those passions and affections whence 
all their actions and their conduct flow : by 
which he establishes or impairs their health, 
increases or wastes their powers, co-operates 
with their volitions, or counteracts them, 
excites in them sometimes desire, sometimes 
aversion, sometimes fear, sometimes wrath, 
or any other principle of motion aad of 
action, as it may promote his counsels and 
fulfil his pleasure. 

Thus, when the ark rested on the hills of 
Ararat, it was properly, and almost literally, 
the hand of God that fixed it there. But 
when Noah sent the dove out of the ark, -nd 
she returned, it was. not so properly the im- 



66 

pulse of God that forced her out, it was her 
own deed from the joy of liberty. It was 
not so properly the impulse of God that sent 
her in again, as her own deed, because she 
found no food for her support, no rest, saith 
the Scripture, for the sole of her foot. 

If, from the brute creation, we direct ou* 
thoughts to the intelligent and moral offspring 
of God, we shall find, that the government 
he exercises over them is still different, ac- 
cording to their different natures. In their 
character of sensible beings, he governs thera 
by the same laws and principles, by which 
the brutes are governed ; i. e. not by the force 
of an immediate impulse, but by the influence 
of external objects on their hearts. Their 
frame, however, approaching nearer to the 
similitude of God, renders them capable of 
other ideas beside those that the external 
world presents to tbem ; their affections are 
capable of being moved by things invisible 
and spiritual; as their views are not confined 
to what is within them and around them, 
futurities have an influence upon their hearts 
as well as those things that are present ; and 
they are capable of discerning actions and 
affections, not only as they are in themselves 
and as they differ materially from one another, 
but under certain notions of right and wrong ; 



67 

of beautiful and deformed ; of excellent and 
base ; of honourable and infamous ; of un- 
worthy and dutiful. 

Here. then is a new variety of principles 
or instruments by which God accomplishes 
his will, both in and by his intelligent and 
moral creatures. Is the disposition of exter- 
nal objects, at this moment, such as excites 
in them either desire or aversion ? These 
passions can be moderated, subdued, and 
even changed, by the consideration of the 
consequences that would follow the gratifica- 
tion of them on the one hand, or the mortifica- 
tion of them on the other. The intelligent 
and moral offspring of God may be corrected 
by the view of the influences, which the in- 
dulgence or denial of these passions might 
have upon the dignity and respectableness 
of their character : and, moreover, their 
ability to compare one thing with another, 
and their disposition to ascribe one event to 
a prior event, as its occasion or its cause, 
while, at the same time, beings so constituted 
must naturally regard some invisible intel- 
ligence, both as the Maker and Governor of 
the world, lead them to consider every evil 
that follows such a conduct as their sense of 
right and wrong, of base and honourable, dis- 
approves, under the notion of a punishment, 



68 

or a testimony of the divine displeasure ; and, 
on the contrary, every good that follows such 
a conduct as the same principles dictate and 
approve, under the idea of a reward or testi- 
mony of the divine favour. This disposition, 
united with their natural propensity to pry 
into what is yet to come, leads them to re- 
gard their present lot, so far as it is connected 
with their moral conduct, or proceeds from 
it, as a sample of their future fate, or an 
omen of something like w 7 hat is prepared for 
them hereafter. 

Here then is another helm, by which the 
great Ruler of the world steers it to its ap- 
pointed end. So far as their natures are the 
same* he rules all his creatures by the same 
principles and laws ; so far as their natures 
differ, he rules them by different principles 
and laws, leaving each in the perfect posses, 
sion of its peculiar properties and characters. 
Thus you see what, in this observation, it was 
my principal desire you should see, that we 
conceive there is no government of God, in- 
terfering with the accountableness of man ; 
no such agency of the great Creator o# his 
creatu s eoftl -ids all moral differences, 

as leaves no distinction between vice arid 
Virtite 6* ito pre-eminence of the good above 
the wicked. For if our representation of the 



S9 

tftatter be not wrong, though there can be ti# 
merit or demerit, nothing either to praise or 
blame in any atom of the material world 
that it is in this situation rather than in that* 
because it was God who appointed, and who 
fixed it in its place : though there can be too 
vice or virtue in this or that conduct of the 
brutes, because, though they stray one way 
or the other, not by divine impulse, but ffbiii 
their own will and humour^ yet it is without 
the knowledge that any thing is right or that 
any thing is wrong ; notwithstanding this, 
wherever the ability to distinguish these is 
found* if that being acts not from the impulse^ 
not as the instrument of another, but from his 
own volition and exertion, as the author of his 
own life and conversation, no consequences and 
external circumstances, no influence of foreign 
motives, (however they may contribute to 
keep that being under the dominion of him 
who has these circumstances at his disposal,) 
can contribute any thing towards exculpa- 
ting him in what he does amiss, or to destroy 
his virtue in what he does aright. 

Whatever is done voluntarily is done mo* 
rally ; if my will were engaged in the action* 
it is no matter what were its circumstances 
or what the inducements to it ; my merit, if 
the action were good* lies in that rectitude of 



Will through which I own the force of those 
motives in which I feel my interest and my 
honour lay ; my demerit, if the action were 
bad, lies in that perverseness or depravity df 
will, through which I resisted the force of 
those better motives, and yielded to such as 
hurt my interests, and disgraced my character. 
Take away my will, and I am not an agent, 
and therefore not accountable ; take away 
my knowledge of good and evil, of right and 
wrong, and I am not a moral agent, and 
therefore not accountable. The knife is not 
a murderer, because it is an unconscious and 
involuntary instrument. The idiot or the 
madman is not a murderer, because he has 
not the sense and the knowiedge of his obli- 
gations. I am not the criminal, if, against 
my intention and resolution, you forcibly, 
employ my hand to give the wound ; but you 
are perfectly criminal, if, unprovoked, unin- 
jured, you have conceived the intention and 
exerted the volition to destroy me, though 
your intention has been frustrated, and your 
volition has failed. The guilt lies in the will, 
and the will was yours ; nothing that you 
could plead can avail to exculpate you ; it is 
nothing to say, that Providence had greatly 
distressed you in your circumstances, and that 
you hoped to relieve your necessities in plun« 



a 

dering me ; it is nothing to say, that I stool, 
between you and your preferment ; it is no* 
thing to say, that you were bribed, encouraged, 
instigated by another ; it is nothing to say, 
that from the frequent practice of cruelty you 
had acquired an unaccountable delight in it, 
and a strange propensity to such barbarities: 
these are motives which that principle which 
is set over all our other principles, as the 
director and the judge, condemns ; these are 
motives that ought not to have influenced 
you ; in your compliance with which lies your 
guilt; and though the crime was not per- 
petrated, yet your guilt is perfected. No 
government that does not destroy our agency, 
no foreign influence that does not take away 
our power of choice, and render our actions 
absolutely involuntary, can destroy our ac- 
countableness, or render us incapable of vice 
©r virtue 

Every bad action that is imputable, must 
proceed from some bad motive; and every 
action that proceeds from a goocf motive, 
whatever it be in itself, with respect to the 
character of the agent, is a good one. Our 
consciences will neither smite us the less, nor 
the world resent our conduct, or disdain our 
character the less, nor the evil consequences, 
the natural punishment of our crimes prove 



m 

the less, because we can assign the motives 
that induced us to them in our circumstances* 
or in our Situation : (things that were not in 
our power :) on the contrary* if we can assign 
no motive for our conduct, whatever might 
be the judgment of the world upon it, our 
consciences not knowing to what principle it 
Was to be ascribed, would neither approve 
nor condemn us for the action. Though it 
should be admitted therefore for truth, that 
almost every object that surrounds us, and 
almost every circumstance in our situation, 
awakens in us some sentiment or affection 
that has a close connexion with our conduct, 
yet so long as these objects, and these circum- 
stances, do not take away Qur agency, or 
divest us of our will, though they be ap- 
pointed us by God, though they be the means 
through which he accomplishes his purposes 
in respect to us, yet this government of Ms 
does not destroy our moral nature, or super- 
sede either the justice or propriety of our 
appearance at his judgment-seat. 

Thus, though we conceive that God exer- 
cises an uncontrollable dominion over all his 
creatures, yet We conceive, that it is in such 
a manner as to leave the distinguishing cha* 
racteristics of each, entire and unviolated; and 
in particular, that the government which hs 



73 

exercises with regard to man, whether in dis- 
posing the circumstances of his situation, or in 
controlling the effects of his volitions, is such 
as does not at all destroy his accountableness, 
or interfere with the character and obliga- 
tions of moral agency. 

There yet remain to be considered some 
other general observations concerning the 
Divine Providence and government; at pre- 
sent I shall only add the following reflections. 

Let it be remembered, that we have not 
yet proved the doctrine of God's government, 
but only in part explained to you something 
of the idea we Ijave formed of it. Turn back 
your thoughts. Do not wonder if you find 
it difficult to enter into some of the notions 
that have been presented to you, or to form 
a clear and comprehensive idea of the divine 
government. Incomprehensible as he is in 
his nature, what marvel is it that the counsels 
of God " should be unsearchable, and his 
judgments a great deep?" Ever mindful of 
the mighty disproportion that there is be- 
tween human faculties and divine perfections, 
between the exertions of the human nature 
and the operations of the Supreme Being, let 
all youi conceptions of him be formed with 
the most perfect modesty and diffidence, and 
all your contemplations, and all your reason- 

D 



74 

ings concerning him, conducted with the pro* 
foundest reverence and fear. 

Your inquiries after God, your endeavours 
to become, in any respect, more acquainted 
with your Maker, while they are neither pre* 
sumptuous in themselves, nor uncharitable in 
their influences, are laudable and acceptable. 
In such inquiries, the difficulties that we meet 
with ought not to impair our faith, but to 
improve our humility. A few self-evident 
principles excepted, there is nothing in the 
world concerning w^hich difficulties may not 
arise, and to which objections may not be 
urged. If this were a justification of in- 
fidelity, there could be no faith upon earth, 
for whatever is self-evident is not an object of 
faith but a subject of knowledge. If in our 
researches after God we acquire nothing but 
a new and sensible conviction that he is great, 
and we know him not; if they sink us into 
deeper veneration of our Maker ; if they lead 
us to prostrate ourselves before him with 
humbler adorations, and to. address him in 
strains of lowlier self-abasement, they have 
been good, and they have done good, and are 
just matter of approbation and of thanksgiving. 
Consider then what you have heard, and may 
God lead you to the true improvement of it 



DISCOURSE FIFTH. 



Lamentations iii. 37- 

WHO 18 HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS; 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

W e proceed now to some other observations 
concerning the nature of the divine govern- 
ment. 

3. As the government of God is accom- 
modated to the different nature of his dif- 
ferent creatures, so also is it adapted to the 
various circumstances and characters of in- 
dividuals. 

If God does exercise any government at 
alt over the world, we have the highest reason 
to conceive, that it is exercised in perfect 
wisdom and in perfect love : for these are his 
attributes, and they are the characteristics of 
every thing that is divine. It is very true, 
that in many instances our faculties may be 
unable to perceive them, and that the divine 
conduct may be both wise and good where 
to us it is mysterious and inexplicable ; but 

D2 



T6 



wherever, upon a clear and comprehensive 
survey, we discern concerning any thing that 
it would be unwise or unkind, there, we may 
safely conclude, that such neither is, nor will 
be the conduct of God towards his creatures. 
It requires no sagacity to discern, that a 
great part of wisdom lies in accommodating 
our conduct, upon all occasions, to the cir- 
cumstances of others. Though all men pos- 
sess the same general nature, yet whoever 
should treat all men in the same general 
manner, without distinction, and without 
variation, would hardly rise into reputation 
for wisdom and honour. For, whatever were 
his aim, he would find that it could not be ob- 
tained in respect of all men in the same man- 
ner, and by the same means ; whether he 
meant to secure unto himself their esteem 
and reverence ; to bend their will into com- 
pliance with his own ; to establish his autho- 
rity ; to insure their obedience ; whether he 
meant to instruct, to correct, to comfort, or 
encourage them; to lead them into truth; 
to divest them of their follies ; to improve 
them in virtue; to guard them against snares 
and dangers ; to secure, or to promote their 
happiness ; whatever were his aim, if he knew 
the different circumstances and tempers of 
mankind, if wisdom were his counsellor, he 



77 

would vary his application according to the 
variety of his subjects; because what succeeds 
with one, might ruin his intentions with re- 
spect to another. 

There is, it seems, from whatever it arises, 
a mental, as well as a bodily constitution ; a 
certain peculiarity of frame, that requires, 
upon every occasion, to be treated in a 
certain manner. As that which would cure 
a disease in one body may confirm it in 
another, so that by which we might obtain 
our wishes upon one mind, upon another 
might obstruct, and even defeat them.^ The 
giddy and the serious, the gay and the melan- 
choly, the sanguine and the despondent, the 
tender and the unfeeling, the self-willed and 
the compliant, the diffident and the presump- 
tuous, the credulous and the suspicious, the 
modest and the vain, the passionate and the 
cool, the sensual and the spiritual mind, the 
prosperous and the afflicted, the busy and 



* Does not this supply an answer to the question so often 
asked, why the children of a numerous family, all of them 
subject, as far as appears, to the same external influences, should 
so often turn out in their progress through life such very 
different characters ? And is it not a very serious call upon 
parents, masters, and guardians, to study the temper of those 
committed to their care, and as far as possible to adapt their 
mode of treatment to what the peculiar temperament of the 
respective individuals may seem to require ? Editor. 

D3 



78 

the vacant, the knowing and the ignorant, 
the easy, whose thoughts are much confined 
within the present, and the anxious, whose 
imaginations are ever stretching forward into 
futurity ; these, it is evident, require different 
treatment ; if you would in any thing succeed 
with them, they must be attempted each in 
a manner peculiar to himself; and though 
they be ruled by the same general principles, 
if you would rule them without control, and 
make them all subservient to your designs, 
these principles must be modified, timed, 
circumstanced, restrained, aided, qualified 
in various methods, according to the various 
tempers and humours you have to deal 
with. 

In a proper application to different cha- 
racters, lies a very great part of wisdom and 
of prudence ; and as these different tempers, 
are, in some measure, if not altogether, formed 
by the influence of external circumstances 
upon us from our first entrance into life, so, 
by the change of these, they are capable of 
being greatly changed. Our temper will, in 
some degree correspond to, and accompany 
our circumstances through all their variations; 
and even, after that peculiar habit or con- 
stitution of mind, which will probably pre- 
vail through our lives ; is forced; an alteration 



79 

of external circumstances, a new occurrence 
will, for the time, produce a proportionate 
alteration in ourselves; and hence arise those 
seasons in which we feel not the force of the 
principles whereby at other times we are 
ruled ; or in which we are moved by those 
things of which, at other times, we are in- 
sensible. 

In a just knowledge of these seasons, and 
a careful attention to them, consists another 
considerable part of wisdom and of prudence 
necessary to all who would maintain their 
authority, and carry their designs with others. 
Through the ignorance and neglect of these,, 
what we meant for a chastisement might 
prove an encouragement ; what we meant for a 
blessing, might prove a curse ; what we meant 
for an inducement to comply with our desires, 
might prove a reason of opposing them. The 
same effect must often be produced by dif- 
ferent means in different persons; and at dif- 
ferent seasons by different means, even in the 
same person. 

Thus the influence of. men on men is cir- 
cumstanced ; and it is by these means that 
the power and authority of men over men is 
maintained. It makes no difference from 
what quarter the influence proceeds ; circum- 
stances would facilitate or obstruct its opera- 

D4 



80 

tion equally, whether it proceed from God or 
man. When he acts in them, it matters not 
what opposes, or what concurs with his de- 
signs; but while he treats them as rational 
and voluntary agents, his conduct, it would 
seem, both in wisdom and in kindness, must, 
upon the forementioned principles, be dif- 
ferent towards different individuals, according 
to their respective tempers and their various 
situations. 

To form all men to virtue and to happiness 
by the very same means, seems as impossible 
as to conduct the inhabitants of any country 
from every corner of ft to its centre, by one 
and the same road. We conclude then, that 
as a wise and good father of a family will 
rule all his household by the laws of righte- 
ousness and kindness, and yet suit his conduct 
to the various tempers and circumstances of 
every member of it, so God, whose love is 
perfect, whose wisdom is infallible, and whose 
power is equal to all his purposes, will adapt 
his dealings with his creatures to their respec- 
tive tempers and situations ; i. e. he will ac- 
commodate their circumstances quite through 
life to their characters in general, and at 
every moment to their various situations at 
the time, in such a manner as shall keep them 
absolutely under his control, and best promote 



81 

the great designs of his providence with re- 
spect both to themselves arid to others, through 
their means. 

If you consider the different characters of 
men as arising from an original difference of 
frame, there is no difficulty in this concep- 
tion ; if you consider them as arising from the 
influence of the first scenes of life they pass 
through*, forming what we call a mental con- 
stitution, the difficulty is not great; for 
what we say amounts to this ; that as all 
events are in the hands of God, and all the 
circumstances of his intelligent creatures at 
his disposal, he so connects and regulates 
them, from the beginning of their existence, 
that their effects, both for the present and in 
their succession one after another, shall ac- 
complish his purposes with respect to every 
individual, and carry on those designs of his 
to which he meant they should be subser- 
vient. 

For example: let us take it for granted 
that this is a scene of discipline, and that the 
great aim of Providence is to form mankind 
to virtue: it is easy to apprehend, that a 
great diversity of natural tempers mingled 
together in society, may contribute much to 
this desirable end. By affording the "mutual 
conviction of the inconveniences and advan« 

D 5 



tages of each, they will tend to perfect one 
another ; they will open a wide field for the 
devout contemplation and adoration of the 
Divine Perfection, who can in the same species 
of creatures produce such mighty differences,, 
and yet make all harmoniously work together 
for the common good, and keep all in sub- 
jection to himself, and in subserviency to his 
will ; they will afford occasion to many vir- 
tues which otherwise could never have been 
known ; they will teach mankind mutual 
tenderness and indulgence, and lead them to 
unite together ; that since in themselves sepa- 
rately they do not find all perfection, they may 
find the mutual supply of their deficiencies 
and wants in their mutual union. For these, 
and many other like reasons that might be 
specified, a diversity of natural tempers is ex- 
ceedingly desirable in a state of discipline. 

This being agreed on, let us go on to sup- 
pose, that one man's natural temper is a 
tender sensibility of heart, and that of another 
a rigid unfeelingness of spirit; the one is 
formed to despise dangers, and to overlook 
the sufferings of his brethren: the other 
trembles at the sight of evil, and is oppress- 
ed by too lively a sympathy with the calami- 
ties of others. It is no matter whether this 
difference proceeds from original constitution, 



83 
or from the influence of other men, or of ex- 
ternal circumstances in early life ; fbr wise 
reasons God appoints, from some cause or 
other, this diversity. 

How then shall the obduracy, and the pre- 
sumption of the one, be formed to humanity 
and prudence ; how shall the tender sen- 
sibility of the other be enabled to sustain 
itself, so that its comfort and its usefulness 
shall not be lost by the excess of those prin- 
ciples, which in a just degree would be safe 
to itself, and beneficial to others ? Let the 
one be exposed and endangered; let the 
danger overtake him ; let pain and misery 
be its issue, and he will in time be cured of 
his inhumanity and his presumption, and will 
learn to fear upon just occasions, and to pity 
where compassion would become him. Let 
the other be familiarized with danger; let 
him also be familiarized with deliverance ; 
let his lot be cast among the children of 
affliction ; through habit, both his own dangers 
and their sorrows will affect him less, and by 
and by he will attain to that self-command 
and steadiness of mind which alone was want- 
ing to make him capable of self-defence, and 
capable of usefulness to others. 

God has purposes to serve by us, as well 
as in us ; the obdurate and presumptuous may 

D 6 



84 

be a proper instrument to scourge a wicked 
family, or a wicked nation ; and his oppres- 
sion, while it teaches them humility and 
virtue, may awaken in them that resentment 
which shall ultimately reduce him into those 
distresses that shall correct and reform him- 
self. The tender-hearted and the diffident 
is a proper counsellor for the presumptuous 
or the thoughtless.; a proper comforter for 
the afflicted and distressed. If he be by 
any tie of nature, or of duty, connected par- 
ticularly with these, the dangers into which 
the one is betrayed by his presumption, may 
form him to fortitude ; the distresses under 
w T hich the others labour, may habituate him 
to those scenes of sorrow that at first op- 
pressed him, and cause him to exert his best 
endeavours, his manliest resolution, that his 
sympathy may not increase but mitigate their 
afflictions ; that it may be not merely painful, 
but also useful. 

To take another instance. One man is 
born with a certain tamenessand meekness of 
soul, or this temper is early formed in him 
by the circumstances of his situation ; ano- 
ther, from the same causes, possesses a less 
patient, and more enterprising spirit. Moses 
was well appointed for the leader and law- 
giver of a stiff-necked and perverse generation 



in their pilgrimage, while at the same time* 
their provocations, insults, and injuries, were 
well adapted to prevent his meekness from 
degenerating into mere abjectness of mind. 
Joshua was as wisely nominated for their 
captain in the land of Canaan where their 
business was to conquer, and if they proved 
cot submissive, to extirpate the people that 
they conquered: the meekness of Moses could 
not so well have discharged this commission, 
while, on the other hand, in the difficulties 
of this enterprise, and the miseries it oc- 
casioned, the hardiness of Joshua found suf- 
ficient matter for the exercise and improve- 
ment of humility and compassion in himself. 
And with respect to the Jews in general, we 
may observe, as we pass along, that their 
circumstances, in these dispensations of 
Providence, were wonderfully adapted to 
their character and dispositions, their wan- 
derings in the wilderness, where they met 
with so many difficulties, to inculcate on 
them patience and submission ; where they 
needed so many interpositions of Divine 
Power to confirm their faith in the living 
God ; and their commission to subdue those 
nations that were overrun with idolatry and 
vice, to preserve them from that wicked- 
ness and superstition, to which they had 



$6 

contracted so violent an attachment ia 
Egypt. 

These thoughts may, perhaps, do some- 
thing towards explaining to you what we 
mean wher, we say, that the government of 
God is adapted to the various circumstances 
and characters of individuals ; and to con- . 
vince you, that if God does indeed govern 
the world, it is reasonable to conceive of bis 
government as extending to individuals in 
the same manner as it does to every species 
of creatures : in the one case, accommodating 
his laws to the respective nature of his crea- 
tures, and in the other, adapting his appoint- 
ments to the respective temper and character 
<ef his subjects. 



DISCOURSE SIXTH, 



Lamentations iii. 37* 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS; 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT f 

J here yet remains a very important view 
of this subject, in which we have not hitherto 
considered this general observation, i. e, as 
it respects the morality of human characters; 
on the one hand their merit, by which we 
understand their goodness, excellence, and 
approvableness ; on the other hand, their de- 
merit, by which we understand their worth- 
lessness, baseness, and contemptibleness. 

Hitherto we have co-nsidered the charac- 
ter as consisting only in a certain turn or 
disposition of mind, what we often call natural 
temper; which, though it may in many in- 
stances be favourable or unfavourable to 
virtue, is yet, in many instances at least,, 
perfectly indifferent in itself, neither moral 
nor immoral. With respect to this we have 
endeavoured to illustrate our observation } 



i. e. to show you, that we have just cause to 
conceive of the government of God, as ac-* 
commodated to the natural temper of his sub- 
jects. It is difficult, it is even impossible 
from fact to prove this, and that for a very 
plain reason. We cannot, in many instances, 
come to any knowledge of men's natural 
temper; and in no instance can we attain a 
perfect knowledge of it ; for, though it may 
appear so manifestly as to exclude all doubt 
that this or the other principle prevails in 
them, yet so many various principles may be 
combined together in it, and these in such 
various proportions and such different degrees, 
that it perhaps requires an understanding 
equal to that by which the human soul is 
formed, and by which the circumstances of 
man are regulated, to discern that wise con- 
nexion and just accommodation between the 
one and the other, which would be a conclu- 
sive argument, that the appointment was 
divine. The considerations that have been 
suggested to you may, perhaps, afford a pro- 
bable presumption of the truth of our concep- 
tion ; and if hereafter it should appear, that 
God has either expressly, or implicitly de- 
clared, that he does accommodate his govern- 
ment to the tempers of men, we may then 
proceed with perfect confidence to pursue 



89 

this important truth through all its practical 
consequences. 

With regard however, to the moral cha- 
racter of his intelligent creation, we are not 
left merely to presume upon fair conjectures 
and probable considerations that a part of 
the divine government, or one principle of it, 
is to distinguish between the righteous and 
the wicked: i. e. in the distribution of pain 
and pleasure, in the disposition of their cir- 
cumstances, and the regulation of the exter- 
nal events of life, God gives encouragement 
to the righteous, together with the means of 
improvement in virtue, and discourages the 
wicked, chastising them for their sins, and 
giving them, in the uneasiness of their hearts 
or of their circumstances, persuasive motives 
and arguments to repentance. 

This is that part of the divine government 
which is most ordinarily called, the moral 
government of God ; by which, as being 
righteous himself, and loving righteousness, 
he manifests his favour to the good, and as 
hating iniquity, he also signifies his displea- 
sure against all ungodliness and unrighteous- 
ness of men. That this ought to enter into 
our idea of the Divine Providence and domi- 
nion, we need not argue either from the wis- 
dom or the goodness of God, or from any of 



90 

Lis other attributes ; we can produce the proof 
from fact ; we can appeal to the general ob- 
servation of all thoughtful men, and to the 
particular experience both of the godly and 
of the sinner. 

What is the object of human approbation? 
Not riches, not honour, not pleasure ; these 
may be the objects of our envy and our desire, 
but we say that our praise is prostituted, when 
for these alone it is bestowed upon their pos- 
sessors; our approbation, our esteem, is sacred 
unto virtue. The great may be flattered by 
their dependants, and the voluptuous may be 
envied by the sensual ; but it is the good man 
•whom all men love ; whose life all men mean 
one day to imitate, and whose death all men 
wish to die. 

Who are the just objects of our contempt 
and our distaste? Not the poor, the obscure, 
and the weak: though with our hands we may 
not assist, yet in our hearts we pity them ; if 
their wickedness has not alienated our com- 
passion from them, they have a very moving 
advocate in our breasts antecedent to any 
knowledge of their character: as soon as we 
know T their circumstances, we become their 
friends because they need our friendship. It 
is the wicked we cannot admit into our hearts \ 
it is the wicked we detest; the irreligious, the 



91 

profane, the licentious scorner, the impious 
blasphemer, whose heartackno wledges no God, 
and whose lips audaciously insult him, It is the 
unrighteous, the cruel, the fraudulent, the op- 
pressive, who cares not what others suffer u he 
himself be gratified; who heeds no- what others 
lose, if his own interest be promoted. It is the 
uncandid and censorious, whose evil eyes see 
every thing in an ungracious light, and whose 
heart has no allowances to make for the im- 
perfections and infirmities of others; it is the 
envious evil speaker that delights in publish- 
ing his neighbour's shame; it is the false 
calumniator, who to gratify his love of scan- 
dal, if his neighbour has no shame, makes 
him some to publish, presumptuously sits in 
judgment on his conduct and his principles, 
and passing over what is so bright that it 
cannot be shaded, dwelling on what is darker 
and less apparent, ignorantly and confidently* 
decides, that these things ought not so to be, 
and takes a malignant pleasure to place every- 
thing in the most invidious aspect. It is the 
sensual, so much more brutal than the beasts 
beneath them, as these have no moral taste, 
no moral appetites to gratify; it is the sensual, 
whose anxieties are all employed about the 
pleasing of the flesh, and who wallow in their 
base indulgences, without bounds or shame* 



92 

These are the objects of our contehipt and 
detestation, to whom nothing but a tender- 
ness for ourselves, proceeding from similarity 
of character, can reconcile us ; these are cha- 
racters to which, in its natural state, the 
heart of man has so violent an aversion, that 
it is in great danger of losing all sentiments 
of goodwill towards them, except those that 
relate to their reformation. We behold them 
with indignation, we treat them with compas- 
sion ; from their chastisements praying that 
they may issue in repentance. If we derived 
our nature from the will of God; if it be from 
the will of God that it still retains this con- 
stitution, what can be a clearer argument that 
we are to take this distinction of his creatures 
according to their moral character, into our 
idea of the government of God? 

Are you of a tender and a sickly frame ? 
Will vice or virtue be most favourable to your 
health? Pining discontent, angry passions, 
peevish fretfulness, worldly anxieties, sensual 
excesses, the gnawings and forebodings of an 
evil conscience, will aggravate your burdens, 
and render your diseases at once both more 
distressing and more obstinate ; on the other 
hand, composure and tranquillity of mind; a 
calm resignation to the will of God ; a lively 
faith in the wisdom and equity of his govern- 



93 

ment; the devout recommendation of your- 
selves to him in the faithful discharge of all 
your duties, according to your strength ; the 
prospect of a better state ; the kind affections 
of benevolence and love ; the cheering hopes, 
and the heartfelt satisfactions that attend on 
conscious goodness, will make even the sick- 
liest life not an unpleasant life, will sooth its 
pains, and revive its languors. Virtue is a 
good preservative of health, a noble cordial 
in sickness, and desirable, even as a means to 
facilitate our restoration and recovery. 

Are you poor? Is it indolence or industry 
that must supply your w r ants? After all your 
labours, do you still need the help and the 
liberality of others ? Which will be your 
best recommendation, insolence or modesty ? 
Which will be the most successful advocate, 
a good character, or a bad one? After all 
your own diligence can do, and the charity 
of others will do, are you still in straits and 
difficulties ; your own necessities almost for- 
gotten in the pressing wants of your children 
and of your family, where will you find peace 
and comfort ? in the guilty conscience that 
forbids you to trust in Gtid^ or in that holy 
temper which, not condemned at home, is 
approved of Heaven, and encourages and sup- 
ports the most steady confidence in him, with- 



94 

t>ut whom not a sparrow falleth to the ground, 
who clothes the lilies of the field, and feedeth 
the ravens when they cry ? 

Are you rich ? Who enjoys his riches, he 
who riotously wastes them in luxurious plea- 
sures; he who vainly dissipates them in idle 
ostentation ; he who infamously hides his 
talent in the earth ; or he, who like God, is 
good, and delights in goodness, and imitates 
those tender mercies of his Maker, that are 
extended unto all his works? In every cir- 
cumstance that you can suppose, the domforts, 
the advantages, the enjoyment of those cir- 
cumstances, are on the side of virtue. Do 
you say your case is bad ? vice will make it 
w^orse : do you say it is good ; virtue will 
make it better still : the one will improve the 
worst, and the other will ruin the very best of 
human circumstances. Peace at home, and 
good will abroad^ are the natural fruits of 
virtue, and do in fact generally accompany 
it ; while, on the other hand, vice is as 
naturally and as generally disturbed with a 
troubled conscience and an uneasy life. 

This might be produced as itself an argu- 
ment, and a conclusive argument, of God's 
attention to the affairs of men, and therefore 
will readily be admitted when it is offered, 
only as a reason why we ought to include in 



95 

•ur notion of the diving government both 
the internal and external distinctions that we 
find between vice and virtue ; for, if God 
does at all rule the world, and dispose of its 
events, these being found to take place in 
fact, are to be numbered among the effects 
and operations of bis government. We con- 
clude then with respect both to their natural 
tempers and their moral character? that the 
divine government over his creatures is exer- 
cised in such a manner as to distinguish be- 
tween those that differ, and to accommodate 
their circumstances to themselves. We pro* 
ceed to observe, 

4. That it appears that the government of 
God, so far at least as it respects intelligent 
and voluntary beings, is in part carried on by 
the instrumentality of others. 

Many tilings that have been mentioned 
under the preceding heads might be repeated 
here for the illustration of this ; we shall there- 
fore only add, that if God does at all govern 
the world, this must be owned as a certainty, 
since the being, the powers, the natural 
abilities, the moral dispositions of mankind, 
if they may not be said to proceed from 
men, are very materially affected both in 
themselves and in their operations by the in- 
fluence of men, capable of being variously 



96 

modified, and often actually undergoing very 
important changes from that influence. 

For the truth of this we may appeal to 
every species of authority; to all kinds of 
associations, to example, education, and to 
many other modes of human influence, by 
which the talents of mankind are enlarged, or 
fettered, their natural tempers formed, their 
dispositions afterwards corrected or depraved, 
and their moral characters changed, or fixed 
and determined for the better or the worse, 
which effects produce such extensive and im- 
portant consequences in human life, that no 
government which comprehends not the direc- 
tion and control of these can be able to ef- 
fectuate its purposes among men* These 
therefore, as they determine much with re- 
spect to every individual, and in that, with 
respect to all to whom their influence may 
extend, must undoubtedly be subject to the 
will of God, and are reasonably considered as 
the instruments of his government. 

If God dispenses unto men their external 
circumstances; if he appoints them their 
situation and their connexions in life ; if he 
changes these according to his pleasure^ he 
likewise directs the influence they shall lie 
under, and determines the continuance and 
the extent of that influence. If it be the 



97 

will of God that the new-born infant shall 
be preserved and live, he commits it to the 
care of prudent and tender friends ; if it be 
his will that it shall be early formed to 
knowledge and to virtue, that the seeds of 
these being soon implanted in it, may make 
great improvement, and be greatly useful in 
the little period of human life, he places it 
within the reach of knowing and of virtuous 
friends, that through their instruction and 
example it may gain wisdom. 

In general, whatever may be said of those 
dispositions and principles in others from 
which the influence on ourselves proceeds; 
whether it be to our benefit, or our hurt, the 
necessary and unavoidable effects of that in* 
fluence upon us are clearly to be ascribed to 
God ; it is his will that we should suffer or 
be profited by them, we are therefore to re- 
gard all civil government, with its effects and 
consequences, as constituting a part of the 
government of God, as an instrument by 
w T hich he carries on his designs with respect 
to men ; and in the same light we are to con- 
sider also, parental power and authority, all 
the social connexions in which we find our- 
selves, all the treatment of whatever kind 
which we receive from others. Though God 
did not give them the dispositions whence 

E 



9$ 
their conduct towards us flows, yet he placed 
us within the reach of those dispositions, and 
that, either for the trial and improvement 
of our virtues, or for some other benefit to 
ourselves, or, through our instrumentality, to 
others. 



DlSCOtTitSE SEVENTH. 



Lamentations iii. 37. 

firiiO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WHEN 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

W E may observe in the fifth place, that the 
government of God is carried on by general 
laws ; that is to say, that as in human 
governments the laws are a certain rule by 
which we may in general judge upon every 
occasion what will be the conduct of the 
governor towards his subjects ; so the govern- 
ment of God, both natural and moral, pro- 
ceeds in that steady constant manner, that 
wherever the situation, circumstances, and 
character of his creatures, are perfectly the 
same, we may confidently expect the same 
effects and consequences. 

As it seems wise that the government of 
God should be carried on by the instrumen- 
tality of others, that men might not be de- 
tached and separate from one another, but 
might live in mutual friendship and depen- 

E2 



100 

dance, united to one another by the ties of 
gratitude and love, and repelled only from 
those evil characters which, having no kind 
regard for others, deserve not to receive any 
benefit from them ; so also does it seem wise 
and even necessary, that the government of 
God should be carried on according to general 
laws ; i. e. that the blessings and the evils of 
life, its pleasures and its pains, should be dis- 
pensed after a certain steady rule, so that the 
faculties of his intelligent creatures might be 
of some use and service to them, and that 
the just exertion of them might find its just 
encouragement. Without this, there could 
be no foundation for that wisdom which we 
call experience. In the most advanced age, 
we should die with as little knowledge of the 
true use and end and rule of life, as we set 
out with in its earliest periods. 

If the harvest did not regularly succeed the 
seed time; if the produce did not answer 
-both in quantity and in quality to what was 
sown ; if this were a long summer's day, and 
the next a short winter's gleam ; if that which 
is to-day our food, should to-morrow be our 
poison ; if that by which we now delight, and 
please, and serve our friends, should ere long 
be a pain, a disturbance, and disservice to 
them, what a scene of confusion would be 



101 

human life ! how full of doubt and suspicion 
would our conduct be ! how vain the reason- 
able powers, and how miserable the situation 
of mankind ! 

The same regularity is necessary, and the 
same regularity is observed also, in the moral 
government of God. If one mode, of conduct 
were ope while the general interest of man- 
kind, and another while, as general an injury; 
if at one time virtue were beautiful and re- 
spectable in the eyes of others, and approved 
within our own hearts; and at another time 
vice produced the same good- will, and the 
same self-satisfaction ; if one while a pious 
education made men good, and another while 
virtue arose from licentious principles and 
examples ; if the means of grace should pre- 
sently become the means of corruption ; if 
prayer should to-day be the nurse of virtue, 
and another day be its bane ; men could have 
no rule to determine what was duty, no 
ground whereon to build their pleasures 
and their hopes. All wisdom, and all obli- 
gation, would cease of course ; and if the 
frame of nature itself were not dissolved, all 
government, both human and divine, would 
be destroyed. But again, 

6. Notwithstanding that the government 
of God be ordinarily administered by the in- 

E3 



102 

strumentality of others, notwithstanding that 
it be ordinarily administered according to 
stated general laws, yet it is necessary to re- 
member, that if God be indeed the ruler of 
the world, this instrumentality, and these 
laws, are the result of his will; and therefore 
exclude not the possibility, or even the pro- 
bability, that if any just occasion ofFers, an 
occasion in which the instrumentality of 
others, according to their natural powers, or 
in which the laws that are established accord- 
ing to their constant tenor, cannot accomplish 
the divine purposes, or would defeat them, 
(occasions of which we have not, and of 
which we cannot have a competent discern- 
ment,) that in such cases God may act im- 
mediately by his own right hand as it were, 
and suspend, or even counteract those laws 
by which he usually conducts his govern- 
ment. 

The same authority that enacts surely can 
repeal, and the same power that could, the 
same will that would superintend the interest 
of the world by the mediation of other agents, 
may, upon good evidence, be believed, on 
fit occasions, to administer its affairs without 
such mediation. 

There is no absurdity, as some have very 
absurdly asserted, in a divine interposition or 



103 

supernatural event ; there is nothing contra* 
dictory in the idea of a miracle, nor any thing 
in the nature of it that renders it incapable 
of evidence. If God can destroy the world 
which he has made, where is the difficulty 
in believing that he can reverse the laws he 
has prescribed to it ? If it was for the benefit 
of the world that he ordained these laws, 
or observes them in his government, where 
is the absurdity in believing, that when the 
benefit of the world would better be pro- 
moted by it, he not only can, but will sus- 
pend these laws, or, if it be needful, so long 
as that necessity may continue, will violate 
and counteract them ? 

The laws of nature are nothing in them- 
selves; it is but an idea which man has 
formed, from the observation that the events 
of life have a certain connexion, and proceed 
in a certain tenour. The laws of nature are 
most justly regarded as the manner in which 
the Lord of nature ordinarily chooses to con- 
duct his operations; and will any man affirm 
that God cannot^ will any man doubt, can 
any man who believes his absolute perfection 
doubt that he must^ change that manner of 
operation whenever the happiness of his crea- 
tures, or whatever other ends he has in view, 
would be better promoted by the change, 

E*4 



104 

than by the continuance of it ? In the last 
place, 

7. I SHALL only add, that with regard to all 
practical consequences of this- doctrine, with 
regard to all the influences which the con- 
sideration of the divine government ought to 
have, and would naturally have upon our 
temper and our conduct, it is a matter of 
perfect indifference whether we suppose with 
some, that every event takes place at the 
proper season, and in its appointed circum- 
stances, in consequence of certain delegated 
powers, united, blended, proportioned, and 
throughout all their successive operations ad- 
justed to one another in the first formation of 
the world, with infinite and incomprehensible 
wisdom ; or, whether they proceeded irom 
successive commands or operations of God, 
acting from time to time according to cir- 
cumstances and emergencies. 

If to-day God has given me peace, and 
health, and plenty, and afforded me the op- 
portunity of attending on his public worship, 
what is it to me whether I received these 
blessings in consequence of a pre-established 
order and series of events settled from the 
beginning of the world, or whether I receive 
them through his particular command, or 
through his interposition this day? On both 



105 

suppositions he is equally the Author of my 
mercies, and equally entitled to my gratitude 
and love. If I profane or abuse this day of 
God, and to-morrow, for the chastisement of 
my sins, God should visit me with sorrow, 
what is it to me whether that sorrow pro- 
ceeds from a pre-established order of events, 
formed upon the foresight of my folly, and 
adjusted to it, or from an immediate opera- 
tion of God? In both cases, being connected 
with my folly, and succeeding it, it is equally 
my punishment ; has in both cases an equal 
tendency to awaken me to serious thought 
and devout reflection; and in both cases 
requires to be acknowledged with equal 
humility, and improved with equal care and 
diligence, 

If I stand in need of any blessing which 
lies not within the reach of my own endea- 
vours ; if, for example, my fields be scorched 
up, and want rain from heaven to refresh 
them, that they may yield sufficient suste- 
nance for me and for my family, what is it 
to me whether the order of events be or be 
not settled from the beginning? I will address 
my prayers to God ; in either case it is highly 
becoming that I should acknowledge my de« 
pendance upon him, and his absolute domjnion 
over universal nature. He heareth prayer 5 

E5 



106 

and he accepteth the prayer of the upright. 
I know that no order of events is so settled 
but, if it be best, he can break that order ; 
whatever we ask of him we must ask accord- 
ing to his will ; we must ask conditionally if 
it be upon the whole wisest and best, or 5 
asking amiss, we shall neither receive nor be 
received. And wherein a prayer thus re- 
strained and qualified, differs from praying 
unto God upon the supposition of a pre- 
established order, I am unable to discern, for 
both contain in them the same sentiments, 
both express the same hopes and expecta- 
tions, the same devout resignation and cheer- 
ful confidence ; they will both produce the 
same effects upon ourselves, and issue in that 
which is according to the will of God. 

No wise order, no moral order, can be 
settled, but upon a foresight of what will, at 
every moment, be the temper and the cha- 
racter of every individual in his intelligent 
creation, A part of that order plainly is, 
that the best shall be best treated, and that 
when they do well, it shall be well with 
them. A part of that order probably is, 
that he who asks shall receive; this is certain 
in the case of all spiritual blessings, since the 
devout supplication of them is not only a 
procuring but an efficient cause of them : 



107 

hence arises a presumption, that to ask for 
them is an ordinary condition of receiving 
any blessings that we want, and of enjoying 
them after we have received them, if they be 
needful to us, and that God has not put them 
in our own power.* 

When we are in the way of duty, we are 
then most certainly in the way of mercy, and, 
to recur to that example that we lately men- 
tioned, if, after our supplications, we receive 
the blessing that we want ; on one notion of 
the divine government, it was the command 
given at that season that the windows of 
heaven should be opened ; on the other notion, 
it was the will of God, foreseeing that the 
want of that blessing would lead us to the 
devout acknowledgment and the humble 
supplication of his mercy, that from the 
beginning such a series of events should be 
carried on, that when we prayed to him, and 
not before 3 the blessing that we wished for 
should arrive. 

And so, on the contrary, if upon our sup- 
plication we receive not the blessing, the 



* This reasoning, so just and conclusive, ought for ever to 
settle the long unedifying controversy on the efficacy of prayer s 
on which so much has been said, whilst the true grounds on 
which the argument rests have been so little understood. 
Editor. 

E Q 



108 

account must, on both suppositions, be the 
same, viz. that it was not upon the whole, 
in consideration of ourselves, or of others 
connected with us, and with us interested in 
the event, or in its consequences, wisest and 
best that we should receive it. And in gene- 
ral we would observe, that on both these 
notions of the divine government we may use 
the same forms of speech, since in respect to 
every thing in which human duty is con- 
cerned, they are in the last result the same- 

Your time will not allow me to add any 
particular application of what has now been 
delivered to you: if these thoughts shall en-* 
gage you in the study of the divine govern- 
ment, and the contemplation of God's pro- 
vidence, it is well : in a nobler study you 
cannot be engaged ; nor is there any contem- 
plation more fruitful in wise instructions, in 
salutary admonitions, and in reviving conso- 
lations. Consider then the works of God, 
and meditate upon his ways; and may he 
who has all hearts in his hands, so direct and 
prosper the workings of your minds, that your 
thoughts of him may be just, and your medi- 
tations on him sweet. 



DISCOURSE EIGHTH. 



Lamentations iii. 37. 

WHO 2S HE THAT SAITR, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WREN 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

In the progress of our Discourse we come now 
to the second general head, in which we pro- 
posed to Jay before you some of those con- 
siderations from which the providence and 
government of God receives its credibility ; 
and that, not so much for your conviction, as 
your confirmation in the belief of a doctrine 
so important both to the present and the 
future happiness of mankind. 

Though you be Christians, and Christians I 
would hope from principle, not from fashion, 
it is advisable that you should frequently in- 
spect not only the general foundations of your 
faith, but those special principles also on which 
pverv article of it rests, 



110 

With respect to matters of curious specula- 
tion, or of mere amusement, in which neither 
the honour of the Gospel 3 nor the perfection 
of your character is concerned, it may be 
well not to occupy yourselves, and for this 
reason, that concerning such things you may 
find it difficult to form any clear opinions ; 
you may find yourselves perplexed by the 
arguments adduced to support them ; and if, 
without full conviction, you unreservedly em- 
brace this or the other notion, you will be in 
danger of adhering to it obstinately to the pre- 
judice of charity;* or, if you find yourselves 
at any time obliged to quit what has been 
long;, and, in your judgment during all that 



* How perpetually does this happen : such being the propen- 
sity of frail imperfect human beings to substitute what may 
flatter their own vanity, and create them no trouble, such as the 
orthodoxy on the one hand, or the perfect rationality, on the 
4>ther, of their own particular creed, in lieu of holiness of heart 
and life, and entire devotedness to the will of God ! Were it 
not so, should we hear so repeatedly of the efficacy of particular 
doctrines, and so freely anathematize all who cannot embrace 
them? Would it contribute nothing to the spread of vital 
Christianity, if the interesting inquiry of the Jewish expounder 
of the law, what he should do to inherit eterncd life ? together 
with the important reply returned by oar divine Master, after 
he had repeated to him the command, to love the Lord our 
God with ail our heart, and mind, and strength, and our neigh- 
bour as ourselves, were constantly had in remembrance ; f « This 
$o and thou shalt live." EditoRo 



11^ 

time, lawfully in possession of your mind, it 
will perplex you, it will hurt your peace, and 
perhaps bring a suspicion upon other articles 
of your faith, more defensible, more rational, 
and rnore momentous. Moreover, such sort 
of investigations are the less important, even 
if certainty could be obtained, as there are 
few matters of doubtful disputation in which 
the conduct of our lives is concerned ; and 
there are few circumstances of life that can 
have any effect upon our apprehensions of 
these, either to change or to confirm the opi- 
nions we may have formed of them. 

This, however, is not the case with those 
very important principles of religion, which 
not only extend their influence to our lives, 
but are themselves affected by the circum- 
stances of them. It is fit that those princi- 
ples which are to give us the rule of our 
conduct should receive their confirmation in 
our experience. It is wise also that that 
experience should sometimes put our faith in 
them to the trial ; for, as the wind which 
shakes the tree makes it strike its roots the 
deeper, and fixes it more firmly in its situa- 
tion, so, those occurrences which shake our 
faith in those important principles of religion 
wherein our duty and our comfort is con- 
cerned 5 naturally lead the niind to such 



112 

thoughts and exercises as tend to strengthen 
and confirm it. 

Thus, for instance ; though there be no- 
thing in the experience of life, in its circum- 
stances or its changes, that can effect any 
notions we have conceived concerning the 
modes of the divine presence, or the divine 
operation, matters of no moment if the pre- 
sence of God and his agency be acknow- 
ledged ; yet, with respect to this presence, 
and this agency itself, i. e. with respect to the 
Divine Providence and government, as there 
are on the one hand abundant demonstrations 
of this doctrine, which cannot fail to meet 
us as we pass through life, so there are on 
the other hand, those seasons and occasions 
through which we may be tempted to doubt 
concerning the Providence of God, in which 
pur faith, if it forsake us not, may fail us. 

When, for example, through the pressure 
of afflictions, whether our own or those of 
others, to whom we think we justly wish 
better things, or through the unmerited ele- 
vation and unhallowed prosperity of the wicked, 
our faith in the divine government may sink 
below that degree of vivacity and steadiness, 
in which, for the sake both of peace and duty 3 
it were desirable that we should continually 
maintain it, \t is natural to suppose^ that th^ 



118 

more we familiarize to ourselves the argu- 
ments by which the doctrine of the divine 
government is supported, the more steadfast 
will be our faith in it, and less affected by 
obstacles and difficulties. It is reasonable 
to believe, that the confidence we repose in 
the declarations of God's word will be the 
more perfect, and the more efficacious, in 
proportion as the authority it derives from 
these declarations is accompanied by a clearer 
and more comprehensive discernment of their 
evidence. 

It is one thing to believe the truth, because 
it is a part of what we judge justly to be the 
oracles of God ; and another thing to believe 
it, because we perceive its reasonableness. — 
Whichever of these considerations may have 
first gained our assent to any doctrine, add 
the other also, and our faith will be consider- 
ably confirmed and enlivened ; our hearts will 
then dismiss every suspicion, and rest upon it 
with the most perfect satisfaction. 

Since, therefore, the doctrine of the divine 
government is evidently a doctrine of great 
importance, and of extensive practical con- 
sequences; since, as the love of any object, 
if the ardours within be not often fed by re- 
peated meditation upon the amiableness of 
it, will grow cold ; faith also, if it be not from 



114 

time to time strengthened and renewed by 
the contemplation of that evidence which pro- 
duces it, will grow languid, and will decay, 
Since, besides this natural decline the un- 
happy consequence of our neglect, untoward 
circumstances and various occurrences of the 
world may impair our faith, if they do not 
totally subvert it, and take away from us the 
admonitions and consolations of so salutary a 
doctrine, at a time perhaps when we may 
most stand in need of them ; it is our pru- 
dence, and at the same time our duty, to 
fortify ourselves in the belief of the divine 
government, by a constant attention to its 
displays and operations,* and by a serious re- 
view of such thoughts as I am now about to 
recommend to you. 

It is not meant to enter very largely into 
all the evidences of the divine government ; 
a complete representation of them is not the 



* Hence a decisive argument in favour of the unspeakable 
importance of the daily perusal of the holy Scriptures. It must 
indeed be admitted that the frequent allusions to ancient cus* 
toms, the many practices founded upon them, together with the 
highly figurative language of eastern phraseology, so essential 
to the complete proof of the genuineness of the writings, must 
render some parts obscure, and liable to be misunderstood by 
the unlearned reader : But how abundantly is this compensated 
by the constant reference to the agency of the one living and 
true God, which pervades the whole ? to His supreme autho- 
rity who is the sole Arbiter of all events, the Creator and 



115 

work of an hour or a day, but the labour of a 
long life. For there is not a law of nature, 
or a scene of Providence, scarcely an event or 
object in it, but speaks at once both of the 
Creator and Ruler of the world, and declares 
that the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.«~- 
Many of the arguments that might be em- 
ployed upon this occasion are so obvious, that 
if you are at all capable of reflection, or even, 
of observation, you will not need any assist-? 
ance from another. You will form them for 
yourselves. They lie so ready, and they are 
so plain, that if you can apprehend them 
when they are proposed, your own thoughts 
will anticipate the very mention of them. 

It often happens, and indeed in matters of 
practical religion it ordinarily happens, that 
the most obvious are the most striking argu- 
ments ; all that is necessary for conviction is 
what hardly needs to be either suggested or 



Governor of the boundless universe, "in whom we live, and 
move, and have our being ?" — A truth which, above all others, 
has the most powerful efficacy to sober the mind ; to strengthen, 
it against the power of temptation ; to create in it such a salu- 
tary awe of the boundless grandeur, such a lively sense of the 
infinite goodness of God, as can hardly fail of terminating in that 
entire devotedness to his will, which is the surest foundation of 
hope and comfort in this life, and the only means of finally at- 
taining to glory, honour, and immortality, in the never-ending 
scenes that lie beyond it. Editor. 



116 

Illustrated. We shall not therefore dwell on 
these, but from among many proofs of the 
divine government, shall select the following, 
just to propose them to your meditation. 

1. THEgovernment and providence of God 
might be inferred probably from the consider- 
ation of his natural perfections. God is a 
Spirit, and almost every idea we can form of 
an uncreated and immortal Spirit, includes 
in it some notion of activity ; and is it rea- 
sonable then to believe, contrary to our best 
ideas of his nature, that God, whose opera- 
tions might be exerted with so much advan- 
tage to so many worlds, and without any vio- 
lence or difficulty to himself, should suffer 
his perfections to lie dormant, and possess all 
power, as if in reality he possessed none? 
And if this be not reasonable to believe, it is 
then reasonable to conclude, that he interests 
himself in the affairs of the universe ; that 
as all things are subject to his control, so his 
government is actually exercised over all 
things ; for whereon could his power be 
exerted but on these ? Absolutely perfect as 
he is, they could find no employment on 
himself. 

Again : God who is a Spirit is also an om- 
nipresent Spirit: he is every where: how he 
exists every where it is difficult to conceive ; 



117 

and it is absolutely unnecessary for our pre- 
sent purpose to take any notice of the dif* 
ferent notions that may be formed concern- 
ing this divine perfection. When we say 
that God is every where present, what we affirm 
is in plain language this ; that at one and the 
same time he perceives what is and happens 
every where ; and that at one and the same 
time he can every where exert all his powers; 
and if this be true of God, does it not afford 
us a very probable presumption of his provi- 
dence and government? If, through the neces- 
sity of his nature, he is every where present, 
if it does not depend upon his will, whether 
or no he shall know what is, or whatever hap- 
pens through the universe, if he cannot but 
be present in every point of space, through 
every region of immensity, how justly do we 
conclude from hence that all things are ac* 
cording to his will, and that if he perceives 
they be not, he will make them so ? 

This inference, it would seem, cannot be 
refused but upon one or other of these two 
principles ; either that God has no will at all 
with respect to other beings ; that all things 
that regard them are perfectly indifferent to 
him ; that every state of the universe is alike 
good, not one more acceptable than another; 
or, that if at any time it be in a state that is 



lis 

not according to bis will, he sees it and per- 
mits it, with the power of correcting it in hig 
hand : principles, of which it is hard to say 
whether of the two is most unreasonable and 
absurd. 

IF then, to avoid one or other of thes£ 
errors, it must be admitted, that all things 
kre according to his will, that if he perceive 
they be not, he will make them so, we have 
here a complete notion of the divine govern- 
ment and providence, deduced, as you have 
seen, from the consideration of his universal 
presence : if you add that of his perfect good- 
ness, and consider how much the happiness 
of all sensible beings may be affected by this 
or the other state of things ; by one promoted 
and secured, by another endangered and 
impaired ; insomuch that in fact, scarce any 
change can take place by which it is not in 
some measure influenced, the argument will 
acquire new strength : and it will appear still 
more probable, if God knows all things, and 
can do all things, and wishes well unto the 
world; that the state of the world is at all 
times such as he judges to be for that season 
best; or, that if otherwise it would not be so, 
he will make it such. 

In the same manner we might argue from 
the divine wisdom ia connexion with his 



119 

universal presence. For if God have a pei?* 
feet knowledge of the world, and almighty 
power over it, and any designs to accomplish 
in it, (which you must suppose if you suppose 
him to be wise, for the proof of his wisdom 
depends upon the appearance of such designs,) 
if these things be so, then you must either 
charge God with such dishonourable incon- 
sistences as are never found in men, who are 
always careful to promote their designs ac- 
cording to their ability, or you must admit 
that the state of the world always is, or will 
be made such, as best corresponds with the 
divine purposes and intention. So that thd 
will of God will be promoted either by the 
natural progress of things, (whether proceed* 
ing from himself and derived from his ap- 
pointment, or not, is of no consequence in the 
present argument,) or, if not thus accom- 
plished, will be effected by his interposition 
and control. 

Hence then you see, from the consideration 
of the divine perfections, arises a very cre- 
dible proof, that all things proceed according 
to the divine will, or under the divine con- 
trol, i. e. a proof of the providence and go- 
vernment of God. 

2, Again : the relation which he bears' to 
the world, as the Creator and Father of it, 



ISO 

affords still farther evidence of the providence 
and government of God. 

" Of old did he lay the foundations of the 
" earth, and the heavens are the work of his 
" hands; he made us and not we ourselves; 
" we are his people, and the sheep of his pas- 
" ture." It is the voice of reason as well as the 
testimony of Scripture, that every being in 
the universe derived its origin from some 
great, intelligent, and absolutely perfect Being, 
who is himself without derivation, without 
beginning of days, and without end of time. 
Every nature therefore is what God made it, 
subject to no influence to which he did not 
make it subject, and exposed to no changes 
to which he did not expose it. It was he 
whe at first created the system of the universe* 
and appointed to its various parts their cor- 
respondences, their relations and connexions ; 
and if these be the effects of his will, such 
also must every thing be that results from 
them Deriving from him its being and its 
powers, every creature must necessarily be 
dependant upon him for the continuance of 
that being, and the retention of those powers. 

For, you must suppose either that every 
being was constituted in such a manner as to 
continue of itself as it were, for such a period 
as may be thought proper to be prescribed to 



1S1 

it, or placed in such circumstances and con* 
nexions as should produce the same effect ; 
or, on the other hand, that the same power 
which was at first exerted to create, is yet 
continually exerted to preserve the beings 
created in existence. On either of these sup- 
positions you evidently put every thing into 
the hands of God, and acknowledge that 
nothing comes to pass but what either pro- 
ceeds from his appointment and his agency, 
or is subject to his direction and control. 

But again", on the same principles you may- 
form another argument for the divine provi- 
dence, and it is this. God, you say, is the 
Creator of the universe ; and unless you can 
suppose your Creator to be less intelligent 
and rational than the creatures he has formed, 
you must suppose that he had some motive 
to such an exertion of his power, some end 
for which he created it; that he did not make 
the worlds merely for the sake of making 
them : now specify what end you please, take 
what you will to be the principle of the divine 
creation, you will find that the same principle 
will give you good assurance of the divine 
providence, and care over all his works. 

Did he make the universe for the pleasure 
of beholding so beautiful a fabric ? Will not 
the same principle induce him to maintain its 

F 



being and its beauty? Did he make it to dis- 
play his knowledge to those intelligences 
whom he had formed after the image of his 
own understanding? Would not the same 
principle induce him to maintain them in 
their being and intelligence, and also to main- 
tain his other works in their order and per- 
fection, that he might still continue glorious 
in their eyes? 

Do you more justly and rationally suppose 
that he made the world from a principle o£ 
love, his sensible creation to be happy ^ and 
the inanimate to contribute to their happi- 
ness? And can you then suppose that his 
benevolence was powerful enough to engage 
him in the production* but not powerful 
enough to engage him in the government of 
his creatures? Could he create them to make 
them happy, and abandon them after he had 
brought them into being, without any care or 
provision for their welfare ? If this was the 
principle upon which he made it, must it not 
also lead him to assume the government of 
the world, and to consult the happiness of his 
creatures in every successive moment of their 
being, as well as in the first? 

Is the human artist so reasonably solicitous 
for the preservation and good order of his 
works, and are the works of God unworthy of 



their makers attention ? The great machine 
of nature, will it justify no provision, no care ? 
Ve fathers, are ye so watchful over your child- 
ren, so studious to preserve them from evil, 
so anxious to ensure their future happiness 
as well as their present comforts? do yott 
place these things among your obligations ? 
do you rank them among the excellences of 
your character ? do you in this approve your 
conduct, and find your satisfaction? and can 
you then believe that God, the Father of 
angels and of men, the Almighty Parent of 
the universe, has no care over his children 2 
Has he no concern for their interest? Makes 
he no provision for their welfare? Is he 
totally indifferent about their characters and 
their circumstances, and having (what you 
may perhaps have sometimes vainly wished, 
forthe sake of your descendants, that you had) 
all power in his hands, has he cast off his 
children, and abandoned them to time and 
chance ? 

If, either, in the first constitution of the 
world, he has provided for the regular and 
useful operation of material and inanimate 
causes, and for the welfare of his sensible 
creation according to their respective na- 
tures, characters, dispositions, and situation ; 
if he has so ordered the progress of events as 

F2 



to produce the best final issue, and in the 
mean time the greatest general felicity; or, 
if not having established such an order and 
series of events at first, he governs the world 
by a constant superintendence and unremitted 
agency, actuating, guiding, and over-ruling 
all things, to the gracious purposes of his own 
benevolence ; he maintains the character of 
a wise Creator and a tender Father. If we 
deny this doctrine, we must assert, both irre- 
verently and absurdly, that there are some of 
his creatures whose excellences reproach their 
Creator's character, that he might learn a 
lesson of wisdom and of goodness from his 
works. 

The arguments that have been now men* 
tioned, may perhaps avail to convince you, 
that such a providence and government is 
exercised in fact, though they leave the man- 
ner in which it is exercised, undiscovered. — 
On this occasion we only reason on such 
principles as Christ assumed upon a like oc- 
casion, when he said unto his hearers, "If ye 
" being evil know how to give good gifts 
*< unto your children, how much more shall 
c< your heavenly Father give good things ua- 
" to them that ask him ?" 

Under this head, as in some measure re- 
lated to that argument in proof of the divine 



125 

government, which arises from the considera- 
tion of the character of God as the Creator 
of the world, from whom every being derived 
its nature, its properties and powers, I may 
be allowed just to mention, that upon the 
true principles of natural knowledge it ap- 
pears, that the great bond by which a- 
terial world is held together, through r 1 ich 
the heavenly bodies perform their respective 
revolutions, and retain their places and tiieir 
courses ; that, through which also ail the re- 
volutions of the earth are performed, through 
which it is a comfortable and a fruitful habi- 
tation ; that* through which all its changes 
are effected, and by which its various parts 
are rendered the proper subject of human 
skill and industry, is not a property but a 
force ; not inherent, but impressed ; not a 
quality that belongs to the bodies we possess, 
or resides in those that we behold around us, 
but the effect of an uniform and unremitted 
operation of some almighty and omnipresent 
Being upon every system and every particle 
of matter in the universe. 

Since this is so ; since whatever comes to 
pass in the external, the material world, 
comes to pass by the immediate agency of 
God ; it is clear, first of all, that the dominion 
Df all things inanimate is his; and if you will 

F3 



126 

add to this consideration what your own ex* 
perience and observation may have taught 
you concerning the intimate connexion that 
there is between the material world on the one 
hand, and on the other hand the spiritual, the 
sensible, the intellectual and moral worlds ; if 
you will consider what mighty changes may 
be wrought in yourselves with respect to your 
sensations of ease and pain, with respect to 
the perceptions of your understandings, with 
respect to the affections of your hearts, with 
respect to your powers of every kind, and even 
w T ith respect to your continuance in the world, 
by a very little change in the disposition of a 
very few particles of matter, by a very small 
acceleration of their motion, or as small a 
diminution of it ; if you will consider what 
mighty consequences depend upon the views, 
the dispositions, and the lives of men; you will 
be ready to conclude, that whoever has the 
government of the material, must also have the 
government of the spiritual world ; that one 
naturally accompanies the other; and that 
both centre in the God who made them. For 
the present to conclude : 

Those perfections and relations of God 
which yield us such cogent evidence that he 
actually superintends and governs universal 
nature, do at the same time afford us the most 



127 
comfortable assurances that he is well quali- 
fied for so great and arduous a work. Who 
is better qualified to superintend your interests 
and dispose of your affairs? Not you. Neither 
your presence nor your power extend to every 
person and to every event in which your hap- 
piness is interested ; nor is your wisdom in 
any one instance capable of discerning how 
any event, whether prosperous or adverse, will 
affect your interests upon the whole. 

What an argument is here to renounce all 
oonfidence in ourselves, and to cast our cares 
on God ! Of whom should you make a friend 
but of God? If he be our friend., we cannot 
have, either in the animate or inanimate 
creation, one real enemy. And how shall we 
make a friend of God but by an habit* 
obedience to his commandments, and an uni- 
versal resignation to his will? That obedience 
and that resignation is no very easy acquisi- 
tion ; it will cost you much labour and much 
time. The sooner you begin, the sooner you 
will attain to it; and attain to it you must, if 
you wish either for peace in this world, or for 
happiness in that which ,is to come. 

Young man, while thy heart is tender; 
while it is not yet made callous either by the 
vices and dissipations, or the interests and 
cares of this world, cultivate the sacred senti- 

F4 



128 

xriGBts of piety ; give all diligence, that thy 
heart may delight itself in the law of God, 
and that thy will may be totally, universally, 
and cheerfully absorbed in his. I cannot give 
you better counsel either for this life or the 
next. If there be truth in God, it will in- 
sure to you a blessed immortality ; and if you 
dare trust my testimony, it will enable you 
perfectly to enjoy the prosperities of life, and 
sincerely to rejoice even amidst its apprehen- 
sions and afflictions. What is there beside 
that can do these great things for you? 
Nothing. 



DISCOURSE NINTH. 



Lamentations iii. 37*. 

TTHO IS HE THAT SA1TH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ?- 

In the progress of our Discourse upon these 
words, having first explained to you what 
appeared to me to- be the true idea of the 
government and providence of God, I come 
at length to state to you some of those con- 
siderations from which the providence and 
government of God receives its credibility. 
Here, having previously shown the necessity 
aiid the advantage of attending to such con- 
siderations, we observed, 

1st, That the providence and govern- 
ment of God might probably be inferred from 
his natural perfections, 

2dly, From the relations that he bears unto 
the world as the Creator and the Father of 
it, and I propose now to show, in the 

3d place^ That the very being of a revela* 

F5 



130 

tion, abstracted from any thing it teaches on 
this subject, is itself a proof of the Divine 
providence and government. 

Consider what a revelation is. It is an 
interposition of God to impart unto his in- 
telligent creatures something respecting either 
their present or their future interest, which 
could not have been attained by them, or 
n©t in the necessary degrees of light and 
power, through the mere force of their na- 
tural abilities. 

Now let the end of it be what it will, a 
divine interposition is a certain proof that the 
affairs of men are not overlooked by their 
Creator, or excluded from his care. It is an 
indisputable argument that he knows them ; 
that he observes them ; that he prefers one 
situation of them to another ; and thinks it 
not beneath him, but worthy of his perfec- 
tions, and of the relations that he bears to 
his creatures, to afford them, when they need 
it, better aids than those with which it was 
wise and fit they should originally and gene- 
rally be entrusted. 

But besides that he is attentive to the 
affairs of men, and interests himself in their 
welfare, a revelation likewise proves, that the 
God who made us has it in his power to bless 
ys in whatever measure seemeth to him good; 



131 

that our natural abilities impose no restraints 
on his beneficence, and consequently, that 
if what we call nature be not in one instance, 
it is not in any instance inviolable, or un- 
surpassable by God ; i. e. in other words, 
that he has all the powers of nature in his 
hands ; that when such is his pleasure, he 
can do greater things than any that he 
has done in the constitution, or the course 
of nature; i. e. whatever seemeth to him 
good. 

If moreover we consider, that every reve- 
lation must appeal to miracles as its creden- 
tials, (since no reasonableness, no excellence, 
no importance, no expediency of a doctrine, 
as we have seen, can prove it to be an imme- 
diate communication from on high,) if we 
consider this, we shall not wonder that the 
very being of a revelation is mentioned as an 
argument of the- divine providence and 
government ; since, if it be a revelation that 
is credible, that is worthy to be received, it 
must have been introduced, or accompanied 
by those events which will demonstrate the 
Author of them to have it in his power to 
reverse, to counteract, or to suspend what- 
ever is most certain, most stable, and most to 
be depended on in nature; i, e. to have the 

F6. 



las. 

absolute and uncontrollable government of 
the world. 

If the subject of this revelation, the intel- 
ligence that is by it communicated to man- 
kind, be merely what respects the comfort or 
the present happiness of mankind, together 
with the government of God, it will demon*, 
strate his benignity and goodness ; if it be 
what respects their moral dignity, or their 
happiness, as connected with their moral 
character, it will at the same time demon- 
strate both the natural and the moral govern- 
xnent of God. 

Consider then what evidence ariseth from : 
the Christian revelation to the doctrine we 
would establish. It is confirmed by many 
signs and wonders, with which God could 
not have borne his testimony to it, if the 
laws of nature had been any thing but his 
own volitions. The subject of it is the hap- 
piness of mankind in the practice and pursuit 
of virtue. And what can be a stronger argu- 
ment of the moral government of God, of 
his inviolable resolution to distinguish be- 
tween the righteous and the wicked, than, 
that he violated the laws of nature, those 
]$ws, the general prevalence of which wat 
necessary not merely to the well-being, but 
even to the very existence of bis creature^ 



las 

ia order to give evidence, and to procure 
attention to what the Gospel has to depose 
on a subject so interesting both to the hap- 
piness of man, and ta the honour of his 
Maker ? 

4. These observations on the evidence 
thjat arises from the being of a revelation to 
the government of God, naturally lead us to 
observe concerning prophecy, that this also 
may be adduced in support of the same doc* 
trine. 

Prophecy is a kind of miracle ; whatever 
therefore was just now said under the pre- 
ceding head of miracle, may be applied to 
prophecy. Prophecy moreover is a species 
of revelation ; whatever therefore was said 
under the preceding head concerning revela- 
tion, may be applied to prophecy. But to 
consider what is peculiar in it ; it must pro- 
ceed, as was observed in the second of these. 
Discourses, either fronj the perfect knowledge 
of all nature, so that he who dictates the 
prediction shall have infallible assurance that 
ail things will work together to bring about 
the event he has foretold, and that nothing 
can intervene to obstruct the event he has 
predicted, or to change even the minutest 
of its circumstances ; or, it must proceed from 
the consciousness that all. things are under h|& 



134 

dominion ; that nothing can come to pass 
contrary to his pleasure, or without his order ; 
that he can do whatever he pleases in heaven 
fibove, and upon earth beneath; and that he 
cannot see cause to change his purpose, or to 
repent him of his will. On either of these 
suppositions, one single circumstantial pro- 
phecy, be the subject of it what it will, per- 
fectly accomplished in the event, affords a 
very convincing argument of the providence 
and government of God. 

If you suppose that no other account can 
be given of bis foreknowledge of the event 
predicted, than that he had determined that 
it should be so, the conclusion is very plain 
that he has the government of the world in. 
his hands. If, on the other hand, you sup- 
pose that he foresaw, from the perfect know- 
ledge that he had of all things that were then 
existing, of their operations, their connexions, 
and their consequences, that the event pre- 
dicted would be the natural resnlt of them,, 
and that nothing, neither will, nor power, 
would intervene to defeat his expectations : 
this extensive knowledge is evidently of such 
a nature as could be possessed by none but 
him w T ho had imparted unto every being in 
the universe their respective powers ; ap- 
pointed them their connexions, and blended 



135 

them together in such a manner as to have 
provided for the event predicted, from the 
foundation of the world. 

To know the universe so perfectly, can 
belong to none but to the Creator of it : nor 
could even the Creator of the universe infal- 
libly foretel what should be hereafter, if he 
did not either exercise & constant superin- 
tendency and agency in the w T orld, or had 
not from the beginning, in the original con- 
stitution of his creatures, and the distribution, 
of their talents, in the appointment of their 
connexions, in the general disposition of all 
things, animate and inanimate, provided for 
every event, and appointed unto each its time, 
and all its circumstances. 

Thus you see, that on any supposition, a 
prediction proves that God is not inattentive 
to the world and. its affairs ; proves, that his. 
power is exerted in the management of the 
universe: and therefore will, one way or 
other, turn out an argument of the divine 
government ; either in the way of constant 
agency and superintendence, or, in that which 
is, though not more strictly, more literally, a 
providence* 

Consider then, what striking evidences, 
what numerous proofs we have of this im- 
portant truth ; think how they multiply upoa 



T36 

«&■ in that long series of prophecies which 
began in early tirne% and extend to very 
distant generations, and have been, from age 
to age receiving, according to their respective 
periods, an exact accomplishment. 

Consider how various are the subjects of 
these prophecies; sometimes the affairs of 
individuals, sometimes of families; sometimes 
of kingdoms, sometimes of the world ; and 
you will see, that the government of God 
extends to the minutest as well as to the 
greatest affairs of his creation ; and that there 
is no ground for that unmeaning distinction 
between a general and a particular provi- 
dence. For, as no providence can be general 
that includes not every particular being, so 
the arguments by which we prove the govern- 
ment of God at all, prove, that he attends to 
the affairs of all. his creatures, and rules over, 
every individuals 

Consider again the connexion that sub- 
sists between the prophecies of which I have 
been speaking ; observe how they are united 
in one^ series, and constitute one mighty 
whole, and you will perceive, that the govern- 
ment of God is constant and uninterrupted: 
reSect on their vast extent, the amazing 
period through which they stretch, and you 
will see 5 that the government of God is from 



137 

everlasting to everlasting. On this part of 
my discourse I shall only add, in the 

5th and last place; That in proof of the 
Divine Providence and government, we may 
appeal to many striking facts that manifest 
the wisest and the kindest purposes, as well 
as to the general good order of the world. 

I MIGHT here produce, both from sacred 
and civil history, both from public and from 
private life, many very important events that 
have been brought about by the most incon- 
siderable means ; many, that have, in fact, 
followed as their consequence from those 
things on. which they seem to have no manner 
of dependance, or even the least connexion 
with them; and many, which must be ac- 
knowledged in human apprehension, to have 
been directly contrary to the natural tendency 
of what we call their causes ; the very reverse 
of what reasonably might have been, and of 
what actually was expected from them. In 
these things we must own the hand of God ; 
his providence and agency is necessary to the 
solution of them. I shall not stay to specify 
any of these instances ; this would be al- 
together unnecessary to those who have the 
history of providence in their hands, and it 
is fit that I should not neglect to mention 
to you what occurs within yourselves, and 



138 

within your own observation, to demonstrate 
that God interests himself in the present wel- 
fare of his creatures, and is not unconcerned 
about their welfare in futurity. 

Whence is it, I pray, that the ant, whom 
you will not, I suppose, suspect to be pos- 
sessed of a prophetic spirit ; whence is it, 
that without any foresight of her own, she 
provideth her meat in the summer and 
gathereth her food in the harvest? you see 
no guide, or overseer, or ruler, that she 1 
but can you account for this, if God be not 
her ruler, her overseer, and guide? whence 
comes this provident disposition, but thence 
whence her being comes ! And can any thing 
be a clearer proof that God abandons not his 
creatures, but extends his care over them not 
only to their present comfort, but also to 
their future happiness ? Is not this as indis- 
putable an argument of Divine providence, 
as if God, by miraculous interposition, should 
annually send an angel from on high, to lay 
up in store for this industrious people a pro- 
vision for their future wants ? 

Whence is it that the stork in the heavens 

knows her appointed time ; that the turtle, 

! and the crane, and the swallow, observe the 

time of their coming? that is to say, How 

are they warned to flee from those inclement 



130 

seasons that are not yet arrived ? How is 
tbeir course directed to a milder sky ? How 
do they judge so nicely when the period of 
their sojourning is elapsed? Or by what 
principle is it that when that period is elapsed, 
they assemble for their flight from every 
quarter of the heavens? Have they, how can 
they have, any other pilot, or any other 
monitor, than God ! Whence these changes 
but from the divine appointment? How but 
under the divine direction ? Why these 
changes, if it were indifferent to God whether 
his sensible creation were preserved or perish- 
ed ? if it were indifferent to him, whether 
they prolonged their being in, comfort or ia 
misery? 

Similar to these are the powers of foresight 
and anticipation in yourselves, by which you 
are so much interested in futurity, that it is 
almost always in the present moment, one 
chief object of your thought and care. What 
mean these powers ? What do they say to 
you of your Creator? Do they bespeak him 
to be careless of his works ? To exercise no 
government, no providence over his crea- 
tion ? Do they declare him to be utterly un- 
concerned about his offspring and their affairs? 

If the present blessings of his sensible cre- 
ation could be ascribed to chance, or fate ; 



140 

i. e. if, in other words, the present happiness 
of his sensible creation, at any time, were not 
to be imputed to a benevolent and intelligent 
Principle as its author, yet foresight, as it 
implies intelligence in its possessor, must im- 
ply intelligence in its bestower, or its cause ; 
and a provision for futurity, by whatever 
means, together with the principle through 
which that provision for futurity is made, 
must be imputed to a Being who is at once 
both wise and kind, who knows what is to 
come hereafter, and means to make it wel- 
come to his subjects. 

Though our present circumstances at any 
time might possibly be imputed to some other 
principle than kindness to ourselves, and 
might be necessary for other reasons than 
for our happiness, yet surely, our ability to 
enjoy them in the midst of so many dangers, 
and after having passed through so many cir- 
cumstances that might have deprived us of 
that capacity, is an argument of the benig- 
nity of our Creator; and, at the same time, 
the concern and the solicitude which he has 
implanted in us with respect to our interests 
in futurity, is as strong an argument of his 
care over us, and his determination to pro- 
vide for our happiness in all that is yet to 
£ome 8 



141 

Consider, what a variety of circumstance!* 
both within itself and the world around it, 
must concur together for the preservation of 
every individual animal upon the face of the 
earth, and then doubt, whether God be their 
preserver. Consider how one generation suc- 
ceeds another ; how, as one passes away in 
every species of creatures, another rises up to 
supply its place in the general system of the 
world, and to enjoy those bounties of which 
its predecessors, through a iohger Continuance 
of their existence, might have lost all relish : 
consider, that no species of being is extinct, 
but all continue as they were from the be- 
ginning ; their nature perfectly the same in 
the latest and in the earliest generations ; 
and then say, by whom the species is pre- 
served, through so long a succession of innu- 
merable individuals ? 

Whence come these regular and uninter- 
rupted supplies ? Whence is it, that though 
the earth be ever losing its inhabitants, yet 
its inhabitants are not diminished? These 
are all instances in fact, to which others 
need not to be added, of a provision for 
futurity plainly proceeding from the same 
Being who is the author of nature, and which 
demonstrate his care over his works. In- 
stances of such a care, in which the means 



employed for that provision have for sue* 
cessive ages proved effectual, therefore de- 
monstrate that his power is exerted for the 
benefit of his creatures. 

Consider,, how summer and winter, seed- 
time and harvest, day and night, fail not ; then 
ask, is there no providence in respect to the 
comfort and support of life? Consider, what 
remedies are provided in every province of 
nature, for our diseases and our pains, and then 
ask, Is there no providence with respect to 
sickness and to health ? Consider, how the 
numbers of mankind ordinarily continue much 
the same, and then ask, Is there no provi- 
dence with respect to life and death? Con- 
sider of what importance it is to the happi- 
ness of society, that the powers of indivi- 
duals should be variously dispensed and vari- 
ously combined : consider that in fact they 
are so, and then ask, Is there no providence 
with respect to the distribution of our talihts ? 
Consider also, of what importance it is to 
mankind, that the circumstances of indivi- 
duals should likewise be as varied as their 
powers : consider how much these circum- 
stances depend upon their powers, and how 
much upon their industrious exertion or in- 
dolent neglect of them, and then say, Is there 



1U 

no providence with respect to riches and 
honour ? 

Consider, how much the inclinations and 
tempers of mankind depend upon the cir- 
cumstances of their external situation : con- 
sider of what moment it is that such a variety 
of tempers should be mingled together in a 
scene of discipline and education: consider 
that the fact also is so, and then say, Is there 
no providence with respect to the natural 
dispositions of mankind? Consider how odious 
and how bitter are the fruits of vice ; how 
pleasant and how fair are the fruits of virtue; 
and then say, Is there no providence with re- 
spect to human characters, no moral govern- 
ment of God ? Consider how invariable are 
these laws ; consider what mighty changes 
may be wrought in the tempers and the cha- 
racters of men by well-appointed and well- 
timed changes in their circumstances, and 
then say, if there be no connexion between 
the natural and the moral worlds, no provi* 
dence regulating the circumstances of raan- 
kindj and accommodating their state unto their 
characters,, 

IF the good order of the w r orld, in the first 
moment of its existence were, as undoubt- 
edly it was, a good argument of its being 
the work of an almighty, all-wise, and all- 



1U 

gracious God, the preservation of that good 
order surely will be as good an argument of his 
providence and government? If its good 
order, for a moment, could not be the effect 
of chance, can the continuance of that good 
order be the result of accident ? If its good 
order, for a moment, justly infers the will of 
some absolutely perfect Being, can that order 
be continued against the will of that Being? 
can it be maintained without it ? If in one 
€ase the proof be good, it is good in the other 
also. Some account must be given of the 
constancy as well as of the origin of that good 
order, and no account can be given of it, but 
that it is the will of God. 

To conclude : needs there any other argu- 
ment to give you full conviction that God is 
the only Potentate ? That he does according 
to his will in heaven above, and upon earth 
beneath? I am well persuaded there does not. 
Would to God that I had as firm and lively 
a persuasion that there needs nothing more to 
bring your temper and your conduct into per- 
fect correspondence with this first great and 
fundamental principle of religion : nothing 
more should be needful. By nature you are 
reasonable creatures, and by profession you 
are disciples of Jesus Christ. Remember 
then that God is every where, that he knows 



145 

every IhiLg, and can do every thing ; there 
is nothing that he cannot accomplish ; there 
is nothing which he cannot prevent. He is 
above you, and below you, and around you? 
and within you : he is where no human eye 
can penetrate, he is within your hearts. 

If this solemn truth were permitted by you 
to sink as deep as it ought to sink within 
your breasts, w^ould you still be in every re- 
spect, would you still do in every instance^ 
what now you allow yourselves to do and be? 
In this house of God your attendance surely 
would not be formal, would not be careless, 
would not be drowsy ; would not be inter- 
rupted by the vain imaginations of your own 
minds, or by any trivial occurrence that may 
chance to strike your eyes or your ears. 

When you leave this house of God, his 
day would not be spent by you in trivial con- 
versation, or in secular amusements, or in 
temporal affairs. Your diligence in the great 
work of life would every day be animated by 
the consideration of his presence and his pro- 
vidence. Your pleasure, though restrained 
by this consideration w r ithin narrower boun- 
daries, it may be, than the fashions and the 
customs of a luxurious and dissipated age pre- 
scribe to them, would not be the less, but 
the more lively ; w T ould not be the less, but 

G 



140 

the mote perfectly enjoyed. You would be 
pure in heart ; you would be holy in all man- 
ner of conversation ; your whole life, your 
business, your amusements, your most trivial 
thoughts and actions would be an acceptable 
sacrifice to God, and every day spent by you 
under a serious sense of his inspection and 
dominion* would transmit you, gradually im- 
proving in every thing truly amiable, to that 
last solemn day beyond which this world 
cannot be enjoyed by you, but in which, if 
you have been affected as you ought to be, by 
the providence and government of God, you 
will be translated from this scene of ignorance 
and imperfection to his celestial presence, 
where, " there is fulness of joy, and to his 
" right-hand, where there are pleasures for 
" evermore." There, my friends, let us give 
all diligence to secure a happy meeting ; there 
is no favour that I will ever ask of you 
with greater seriousness. No man can form 
a nobler purpose for himself, or entertain a 
kinder wish for you. 






■ 



DISCOURSE TEKTH. 

Lamentations iii, 37« 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, fVUEK 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

l'o what has been already said under this 
general head of our Discourse, we may add 
the express testimony of divine revelation. — 
Let us here then take a brief survey of the 
doctrine of the Jewish and the Christian Scrip- 
tures concerning the providence and the 
government of God. 

As they ascribe the origin of all things to 
his creating power, so they represent him. 
during the early ages of the world, when as 
yet experience had not taught mankind to 
regard the uncorrupted dictates of their own 
hearts as the laws of their Creator, or the 
frame of nature as conveying to them the 
knowledge of his perfections, and the notices 
of his will ; when as yet^ through their in* 
experience, they were naturally ignorant of 
many things too important to their comfort, 
too necessary to the purposes of God in re- 

G % 



gpect to themselves, that they should remaifi 
in ignorance of them ; during this infancy of 
the world and its inhabitants, the Scriptures 
represent the great Creator as maintaining 
the government of the external world in the 
same manner in which it is now maintained, 
but as ruling the race of men very much by 
visible intercourses and audible communica- 
tions of his pleasure. All the operations of 
nature, and all the changes and events of life, 
are uniformly ascribed to the power and the 
will of the Creator ; and even, whatever ef- 
fects follow the will of men, are imputed to 
the providence of God. 

When a greater refinement of conception., 
a greater strength of reason, a greater com- 
pass of experience had superseded the neces* 
sity of those supernatural communications by 
which they were greatly aided* and in part 
acquired ; that visible and audible intercourse 
with God seems gradually to have ceased ; he 
seems to have ruled mankind, not so much 
by extraordinary interpositions, as by the 
principles of their own nature, by the poweT 
of external circumstances, and the influence 
they naturally have in various situations one 
over another.* 



• h may be remarked here, that a very striking argument, in 
favour of the reality of the miracles wrought inpthe early ages of 



149 

One peculiar people, in process of time, 
by a train of very wonderful, yet not alto- 
gether supernatural, events, descended from 
a few illustrious ancestors, and increased into 
a nation in a foreign country, sinking eventu- 
ally into slaves and bondmen, and therefore 
willing to be led in quest of another settle- 
ment, was selected from among all the nations 
of the earth to give to the rest of the world, 
in the whole of their history and fate, a sen- 
sible and striking example of the moral 



the Jewish history, may be deduced from this fact, that no 
miracles were ever pretended to be wrought after the Baby- 
lonish captivity till the time of Christ. Now if the miracies 
recorded in the more early periods were a deception, what 
should have hindered the renewal of similar deceptions after the 
building of the second temple ? Will it be said, that by their 
captivity and subsequent slavery in Babylon, the people were 
become so enlightened that they could not be imposed upon ? 
Such are not usually the effects of captivity and slavery. Will 
it be said, that it was no longer the interest of their leaders to 
impose upon them? Had then Ezra and Nehemiah no diffi- 
culties to encounter, no prejudices to overcome ? Would the 
belief of a divine interposition in their favour have done nothing 
towards establishing their characters, and giving them weight 
with the people ? Admit the fact, that the former miracles were 
real, and that the providence of God saw fit, at that time, to 
withhold an interposition of this kirid, and the difficulty is not 
only solved, but a far greater weight of evidence is thrown into 
the scale at this day, in favour of those miracles which were 
really genuine. Editor; 

G 3 



150 

government of Gcd in the instance of 
national remuneration in this world for ri- 
tual obedience to a prescribed law, and to 
be the depositaries of that doctrine, and of 
those predictions, that were to prepare the 
way for the Messiah, and to give evidence to 
his Gospel. 

By their long peregrination in the wilder- 
ness, their detachment from all other nations 
was completed ; and that attachment to one 
another, that idea of their own importance, 
which, in themselves considered, are vain, and 
selfish, and unamiable, but which,, if consi- 
dered in comparison with the corruption of 
all other nations, (by communication with 
whom the purposes of Providence must have 
been defeated,) are wise and admirable, were 
completely formed ; and were strengthened 
by an extraordinary system of laws, derived 
from God, of the same alienating tendency, 
as well as by frequent miracles wrought in 
behalf of this people, and by constant wonders 
and tokens of the divine presence accompany- 
ing them. 

Among this nation, as well as occasionally 
among other nations, for a long succession of 
ages, the government of God was in part 
carried on, and his designs accomplished, by 
the ministry of prophets, to whom he coin- 



151 

raunicated his will " at sundry times, and 
ij in divers manners." But this instrument 
of the divine government among men seems, 
for a long time before the appearance of 
the Messiah, to have been totally disused, 
and all the will of God with respect to his 
rational offspring to have proceeded in w 7 hat, 
for distinction sake, we may call its natural 
order and method. 

In the fulness of time, he, who from early 
sges bad been foretold, (a prediction, which 
through successive times was frequently re- 
peated,) as the deliverer of the Jews from the 
bondage of their peculiar ceremonies and 
ritual observances, appeared at once to put an 
end to that dispensation ; and, by the power 
o£ his example, of his precepts, of his doc- 
trine, of his prophecies, of the superior evi- 
dence that he gave to some important prin- 
ciples of conduct, and the discovery of others, 
which either had not been at all revealed, or 
but obscurely intimated in the preceding dis- 
pensations of religion ; to bring mankind into 
a more perfect subjection to the moral govern- 
ment of God than they ever yet had paid to 
it, and to form them into one great and glo^ 
rious society, perfectly holy, and perfectly 
happy, to dwell for ever in the city of the 
livicg God. 

G4 



Thus, as by the Jewish dispensation, man- 
kind were taught the moral government of 
God in this world, illustrated by the history 
of that peculiar people, so, by the mission of 
Christ, his life, his resurrection and exalta- 
tion, they were taught, not only that they 
were to live after death, but, that then the 
moral government of God would be exercised 
in individual remuneration. 

During the personal ministry of Christ on 
earth, the government of God proceeded as 
before, except, that for the evidence of his 
Father's presence with him, for the establish- 
ment of his own authority, and the confirma- 
tion of his doctrine,, he had the power of con- 
trolling, in many instances, the settled laws 
of nature : except also, that the new prin- 
ciples which he imparted to mankind pro- 
duced, according to the various tempers of 
those who heard them, or received them, some 
effects, which otherwise had not taken place 
in the moral government of God. When his 
ministry on earth was accomplished, for 
the reward of his obedience unto death, he 
was received into the presence of God, 
and sat down at the right hand of the Ma- 
jesty on high ; where, for the confirmation 
of what he had before taught, and to give 
certain evidence to his disciples, that he^ their 



153 

Exemplar, had entered on his reward, he had 
all power committed to him both in heaven 
and on earth ; i. e. he was enabled to work 
miracles from heaven, as on earth he had be- 
fore wrought them, for the maintenance and 
propagation of truth and virtue among men. 

As a further evidence of his exaltation, as 
the first exercise of his power, (so to speak) 
for the more perfect establishment, and the 
larger extension of God's moral kingdom 
among men, he communicated to those who 
had been his disciples upon earth the power 
of working such miracles as he himself had 
wrought ; and every other power which na- 
ture had not given them, but which it was 
necessary to impart to them that they might 
be the witnesses of his resurrection to all na- 
tions, and tongues, and kindreds, and confirm 
the truth of it to men of all tempers and per- 
suasions. Through these a wonderful change 
was ? in a short time, wrought in the moral 
government of God, Many cruel, supersti- 
tious, and immoral practices^ were abolished 
in many nations; many individuals were re- 
newed in the spirit of their minds ; their cha- 
racters transformed from darkness unto light, 
from wicked and corrupt, to pure and holy. 
Out of the ruins of idolatry and vice, there 

G5 



154 

arose a rational and manly piety towards God, 
operating in all the sacred sentiments of aw- 
ful fear, of ardent love, of humble resignation 
and steady confidence, as well as in all the 
duties of a cheerful and unreserved obedience; 
there arose, a tender and fervent charity to- 
wards one another, issuing in all the blessed 
affections, the kind expressions, and the use-r 
ful deeds of meekness, humility, forbearance, 
candour, compassion* congratulation, mutual 
helpfulness, and disinterested liberality ; thera 
arose, a certain elevation, dignity, and spirit- 
uality of mind, that disdained a sensual hap- 
piness, that looked above a temporal felicity, 
that despised bolh the. blandishments and 
the terrors of temptation ; that aspired after 
the divine favour as its end, and the divine 
likeness as its, glory. These are the genuine 
fruits of the spirit, the natural. effects of an 
uncorrupted Gospel s clearly understood and 
cordially embraced, These are the effects 
which it did repiarkahly produce in the. first, 
periods of the church, while it was yet preached 
among those who had been born in the un- 
comfortable darkness of heathenism* or edu- 
cated under the bondage of Jewish ceremonies, 
and superstitions ; while it was yet confirmed 
bv signs and wonders., apd carried about .with. 



155 

it the testimony of God in the gifts of the 
Holy Spirit. 

The Gospel has still the same salutary ten- 
dency, the same efficacy to deliver us from 
the pollutions of the world, and to make us 
partakers of the divine nature. The Gospel 
has still the same truth, the same credibility, 
the same evidence; for, though no miracles 
be at this day wrought in attestation o^ it, 
yet the miracles that anciently were wroughfc 
in proof of its divine origin, are come down 
«Xo us weii*attested, and to these is now added 
the visible completion of several of its pro- 
phecies ; and to the same efficacy, to the same 
credibility, I trust I may also add, that it has, 
at least in some degree, actually the same 
effects. Is there not a soul whose sins the 
terrors of the Gospel now restrains ? Is there 
not a soul whose duties. the promises of the 
Gospel now animate? Is there not one living 
monument of the power of Christianity? none 
w-ho walk worthy of their holy vacation ? none 
who are sanctified and comforted, and saved 
by the faith of Jesus? Yes, my brethren, you 
know there are. The Gospel, as it was at 
first, is at this day a very powerful instrument 
in the moral govei'sment-of God: and if. the 
fulfilment of. its prophecies, the period of 
which is elapsedpcan justify our faith in those 

G 6 



156 

of which the period is not yet come, we are 
warranted to entertain the pleasing expecta- 
tion of the more general, and more glorious 
triumphs of the truth, as it is in Jesus. 

Such seems to be in general the idea which 
the Scriptures give us of the divine govern* 
rnent with respect to this world of ours ; of 
the progress, of the revolutions, the means 
and instruments of that government from its 
commencement to the present time: in which 
you will easily perceive, that they represent 
all the external events of life as proceeding 
from the will of God., and at the same time 
every thing that respects the moral character 
of man as proceeding from him also. There 
are moreover, both in the Jewish and Christ- 
ian Scriptures, besides what may be inferred 
from the history that they give us of divine 
providence, many peremptory and positive 
declarations upon this subjeet« 

Let us, therefore, for a few moments, at- 
tend to what they teach us. You will find, 
if I mistake not, that whatever has been set 
before you concerning the divine government 
as the dictate of reason, is. $lso the voice of 
revelation. 

Thus, for example : Has it been observed- 
to you that the greatest and minutest, the 
mo^% trivial and important events of life, ar§ 



157 

all alike the objects of divine notice, and the 
subjects of divine care? The Scriptures too 
declare that, as on the one hand " henemovetk 
" kings* and setteth up kings," and thus deter- 
mineth the fate of nations; so, on the other 
hand, that " the hairs of our heads are all num- 
" bered, and not a 3parrow falleth to the 
" ground without our heavenly Father." — 
Has it been observed to you, that the preset 
vation of every creature, as well as its exist- 
ence, that its continuance in life, as well as 
its introduction into it, must be ascribed to, 
God ? The Scriptures too declare, that " by 
" him all things, consist ;" that " he uphold- 
u eth all things by the word of his power ;" 
that Ci they continue unto this day according 
|C to his ordinances ;"• that " he only, maketh 
" us to dwell in safety ;" that " in his hand is 
c; the soul of every living thing ;" that " he 
" preserveth both man and beast." These 
things are to be considered as the testi- 
mony of God himself concerning his own. 
government ; and if you will not believe your 
Maker, to whom will you resign your faith? 

Having so largely laid before you the proofs 
of the divine government, one of the first and 
most important doctrines of religion, both 
.from reason and from Scripture, I might novy 
.proceed to the consideration of those things 



158 

which render it of such importance, viz. its 
influences upon the temper of the heart, and 
the conduct of the life. But this is too large 
a field to enter on at present ; let me there- 
fore rather exhort you to consider what you 
have heard ; let the concurrence you have 
seen between the dictates of reason and the 
declarations of Scripture on this occasion^ 
teach you to regard them as mutual friends 
that may avail themselves of each other's aid* 
Let it confirm your faith in that doctrine, in 
behalf of which they haye both appeared \ 
and since the efficacy of any doctrine upon 
your hearts, and upon your conduct, will ever 
be in proportion to the vivacity a ? nd the steadi- 
ness of your faith in it, let it induce you to 
cherish the belief of a doctrine at once so 
purifying and so consolatory, so important 
both to your comfort and your duty, by what- 
ever thoughts may arisQ in your own mind io 
its behalf, and by every consideration with 
which the word of God may furnish you. 

May the great disposer of events dispose 
your hearts to wisdom, and may the giver of 
every good and perfect gift, in all things, 
where either your enjoyment or your virtue 
is. concerned, confirm and increase your faith. 
To this end may he give a blessing to tha 
considerations that have now been laid before. 



159 

you, and if they prove the means of -enliven-*.. 
ing your faith, pray ye, that they may enliven* 
his also through whom these things, were sug^ 
gested to you ! 

To. conclude: since this joyful doctrine* 
that without God nothing comes to pass, is 
so clear a dictate both of nature and of reve-». 
lation, it cannot surely be in your power tQ 
think honourably or even comfortably of your- 
selves, while. you embrace not this doctrine ; 
or, while embracing it, you admit not and 
cherish not its genuine influences on your 
hearts. While you neglect to do this, you 
are by no means your own friends, no friends 
to the ex.celJen.eje of your characters, no friends 
to the com fort, of your lives. Believe ye that 
the Lord., God. Almighty reigneth ? Think 
what they wha, believe this should be in re- 
spect of holiness. Think what they may be in 
respect of fortitude and peace. 

AcuiN ; the Gospel of Christ„Jesus speaks 
nothing inconsistent with this language c£ 
nature and of reason ; and it adds to their lan- 
guage, counsels and consolations, which they 
could not give. You are justified in receiving 
it; in rejecting it you could not be justified, 
for it is a doctrine worthy of ail acceptation, 
As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord s 
so walk ye in him. Reason is a talent for 



160 

which you have to account ; and the Gospel 
is another talent for which you have to ac- 
count. That ye believe it, that ye under- 
stand it, this will not avail you, if you have 
not felt it in your hearts ; if you have not 
habitually felt it there ; if it has not influ- 
enced your lives ; if it has not uniformly 
governed these, it will prove no blessing to 
you in the end ; for, " if any man has not 
u the spirit of Christ, he is none of his," — - 
Take his gospel for your guide and for your 
comforter ; whatever ye have found in former 
life, I will venture to predict that hereafter 
you will have need of it in both these charac- 
ters. This is the language of reason ; it is 
the language of experience too* Live with 
itat your hearts, and die with it in your hands ; 
for I know no other ground of hope towards 
God, either for this life or for that which is 
to come, but a sincere and universal conform- 
ity to the doctrine and the image of irk 
Son, 



DISCOURSE ELEVENTH. 



Lamentations iii. 57. 

WHO IS HE THAT SA1TB, AW& IT COMETH TO PASS, WKEM 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

1 am now about to enter on the practical 
application of what has been said to you on 
this subject ; but previously it may be proper 
briefly to remind you of the observations we 
have made concerning the nature and the 
evidence of the providence and government 
of God. You have seen, under the first 
general head, 

I. That what we call evil as well as good , 
i. e. the various modes of pain as well as of 
pleasure, proceed from God : it is the Lord's 
doing ; the result of his will or of his appoint- 
ment. It is not one being that pours out 
blessings on the world, and another that 
mingles evils with those blessings ; both pro- 
ceed from the same fountain, and flow toge- 
ther in the same stream. 



162 

2. Though the sceptre of God extendeth 
unto all, and his providence is exercised over 
every creature, yet he rules every different 
species of beings by different laws, and 
governs all according to their respective 
natures; i. e. in proportion as God hath 
communicated to every class of beings the 
power of governing themselves, in that pro- 
portion his own immediate agency upon 
them is withdrawn, except so far as is ne- 
cessary to preserve them in existence, to 
continue to them the exercise of their 
powers, to give efficacy to their volitions, 
or to control and regulate the effects of 
them. 

3. As the government of God is exercised 
in a mariner correspondent to the different 
nature of his different creatures, so it is also 
adapted to the various circumstances and 
tempers of individuals. 

4. The government of God, so far as it . 
respects intelligent and voluntary beings, is, 
in part at least, carried, on by the instrumen- 
tality of others* 

5. The government of God is carried on 
by general laws ; i. e. as in human govern- 
ments, the laws are a certain rule by which 
we may in general judge upon every occasion 
what will be the conduct of the governor 



163 

towards his subjects, so the government of 
God, both natural and moral, proceeds in 
that steady constant manner, that wherever 
the situation, circumstances, and character of 
his creatures are perfectly the same, we may 
confidently expect the same effects and con- 
sequences. 

6. Notwithstanding that the government 
of God is ordinarily administered by the in- 
strumentality of others, and ordinarily also 
according to general laws, yet this instru- 
mentality and these laws are the result of 
God's will, and therefore exclude not the 
possibility, or the probability, that if any 
just occasion offers, he should act immedi- 
ately by his own right-hand as it were, and 
suspend or counteract those laws by which he 
usually conducts his government. 

7. With regard to all the practical conse- 
quences of this doctrine, with regard to all 
the influences which the consideration of the 
divine government ought to have, and would 
naturally have upon our temper and our con- 
duct, it is a matter of perfect indifference 
whether we suppose with some, that every 
event takes place at the proper season, and in 
its appointed circumstances, in consequence 
of certain delegated powers united, blended^ 
proportioned and adjusted to one another 



164 

throughout all their successive operations ia 
the first formation of the world, with infinite 
and incomprehensible wisdom ; or with others, 
that they proceed from the successive com- 
mands or operations of God, acting from 
time to time according to circumstances and 
emergences. 

As to the evidence of the divine govern- 
ment, proposed under the second general 
head, you have seen that it may be inferred 
with great strength of reason* 

1. From various natural perfections of the 
divine mind. 

2. From the relations which God bears 
unto the world as the Creator and the Father 
of it. 

3. The very being of a revelation, abstract- 
ed from any thing it teaches on this head, is 
itself a proof of the divine providence and 
government. 

4. One single circumstantial prophecy, 
verified and accomplished, affords a con- 
vincing argument of this; how much mare 
that amazing series of prophecies which is 
contained in the sacred oracles of God. 

Many striking facts which manifest the 
wisest, and the kindest purposes, have been 
produced as bearing testimony to the govern- 
ment of God ; and we haye farther confirmed 



165 

this joyful truth from the general and pefpe* 
tual good order of the world. And ? 

Last of all, we subjoined a brief survey of 
the representation which revelation gives us 
of the government of God, and of the doc- 
trine it has taught concerning it. 

All the particular parts of this Discourse 
have been practically applied by us as we 
went along. I now proceed to the third 
general head, viz. to inquire what influ- 
ence it ought to have upon our temper and 
our conduct, and this will lead to the general 
practical improvement of the whole. 

In the first place, how glorious an idea 
does this give us of the divine excellence and 
majesty ! 

How incomprehensible is the knowledge 
of God, from whom nothing is concealed in 
heaven or on earth, or under the earth ; who 
overlooks not the situation of a single atom, 
or the rising of a single thought ! He counts 
the host of heaven, and through an immea- 
surable extent of empire, calls all his subjects 
by their names. In one immense survey he 
beholds every creature* from the angel of his 
presence down even tt> the insect and the 
herb, and the dust we tread upon. The 
meanest individual of his kingdom is not un- 
noticed by him ; or the meanest circum- 



166 

Stance of tbe meanest individual. All hearts 
are open to him ; all secrets are revealed to 
him : as to him there is no darkness and no 
mystery, so in him there is no ignorance, and 
for -him there is no information. In every 
instant he discerns every motion and every 
thought, though they amount to myriads on 
myriads ; and though in the instant that they 
are produced, they perish. As he discerns 
whatever is within us, or above us, or around 
us, or beneath us, as wide as immensity it- 
self, without labour, without over-sight, and 
without succession, easily, perfectly, and in- 
stantly; so he discerns whatever comes to 
pass throughout the -universe, without erroiy 
without surprise, without confusion ; clearly, 
calmly, and unweariedly accompanying, as it 
w r ere, the universe, through its unceasing 
changes, comprehending all things with 
greater facility and certainty than the most 
enlarged mind he has created comprehends 
the smallest portion of his works ; knowing 
even the most intelligent of his creatures 
more perfectly than they are known unto 
themselves. 

Such is the knowledge whicn the great 
Huler of the world must possess and exercise 
in the government of it: a knowledge so 
h, that we never can attain unto a just 



conception of it; surpassing all our thdughi^ 
and justifying all our wonder!- Nor could the 
the government of the world be carried on, if 
this knowledge were not as wonderful in its 
application as it is incomprehensible in its 
extent. What prudence, what wisdom, is 
not necessary to maintain the order, the com- 
fort, and the interests of a little kingdom, of 
a less society, yea, even of a family ? what 
wisdom then is not needful to him who un- 
dertakes the government of the world? What 
wisdom must he not possess who maintains 
its good government uninterrupted and un- 
controlled ? What innumerable ends are 
there to be pursued in conjunction with one 
another, in a just subordination, and ail in 
subserviency to one great end, the happiness 
of his subjects! What innumerable prin- 
ciples, not only different, but even oppo- 
site in their natures, are there to be directed 
in their operation, combined together in their 
just proportion, actuated to a certain degree, 
and within those limits made effectual ; be- 
yond them, to be counteracted and restrained! 
How many different species of creatures, how 
many different humours, how many different 
wills; what blind and impetuous passion^ 
what perverse and froward dispositions, what 
an infinite variety of objects to be attended 



1C>8 

to, and accommodated one to another ! He 
who can reconcile, and control and regulate ; 
he who, through all apparent disorders, can 
maintain the harmony of the world ; he who, 
through all apparent evils, can promote its 
real interests, and raise out of what appears 
to our narrow minds a mighty chaos that 
confounds us and oppresses us, the fair fabric 
of universal happiness : how wonderful must 
he be in counsel, how abundant must he be 
in means! Where but in God is wisdom to 
be found! Where but in the world's great 
Governor, is the place of understanding! 

But farther : however honourable the idea 
of the divine knowledge and wisdom which 
his government of the world suggests to us, 
his power is at least equally illustrated and 
magnified. How immensely strong must be 
that arm on which all nature leans: to which 
the clods of the valley, and the insects that 
inhabit them, and the brutes that tread those 
insects under foot, and the men that rule 
over the beasts of the field, and the angels 
that administer unto human interest, are all 
alike, and all equally indebted for their being, 
and their continuance in being. How in» 
exhaustible and inconceivable is that fulness 
of power which operates upon every other 
ijeiqg, and within them; from which all their 



169 

powers, like an infinity of little streams, are 
perpetually derived and supplied. What a 
force is that which impels the celestial bodies 
through their courses, which confines them 
each to its proper orbit, which gives to 
each its stability and solidity, which rolls 
every wave along, and fixes every sand upon 
the shore ! How awful he who maketh dark- 
ness and it is night, who bids the sun arise 
and it is day; who giveth, in their season, 
seed time and harvest, and summer and 
winter ; who raiseth out of the earth food both 
for man and beast ; who fills every portion of 
the universe with various forms of life, with 
innumerable beings, fearfully and wonder- 
fully made ; who hideth his face and they are 
troubled ; who taketh away their breath and 
they return unto their dust ; who sendeth 
forth his Spirit and they are created; who 
prolongs, through infinite successions, the 
various tribes of living creatures, and who 
alternately blasts and renews the face of the 
earth ! Who is there that hath an arm like 
God, or who can thunder with a voice like 
him? Who is there but the Lord, that when 
he looketh on the earth it trembletb, and 
when he toucheth the hills, they smoke? 
How amazing is that strength which col- 
lected the waters of the firmament, and broke 

H 



170 

open the fountains of the deep, and drowned 
the earth and its inhabitants in the deluge! 
How tremendous is that power which can 
set on fire the heavens, and melt the elements, 
and burn up the earth, and raise a new and 
better fabric out of its ruins ! How incom- 
prehensible is his dominion, who can turn 
the prosperity of the wicked to their destruc- 
tion, and cause all things to work together to 
the righteous for their good ; who, with equal 
ease, can pursue or suspend the laws of 
nature; can effectuate or defeat the purposes 
of others ; can employ them for his instru- 
ments, or execute his will without their aid ; 
without whom we are nothing, and can do 
nothing; in whose hand our breath is, and 
whose are all our ways! With the Lord 
Jehovah there is everlasting strength ; all 
power belongeth unto God; the Creator of 
the ends of the earth fainteth not, neither is 
weary: who in the heavens can be compared 
to the Lord, or who among the sons of the 
mighty can be likened unto our God? From 
him, as from the fountain, comes all other 
knowledge ; from him, as from the giver of 
every good and perfect gift, comes all other 
wisdom ; from him, as from its source, pro- 
ceeds all other power, He dispenses these 
inwhat manner and what measure it seemeth 



171 

to him good ; he worketh all things according 
to the counsels of his own will, and giveth 
not account of any of his matters. Glorious 
is the honour of his majesty, and his great- 
ness is unsearchable ! No agents or advisers 
share with him the honour of his govern- 
ment; for "who hath known the mind of 
the Lord, or who hath been his counsellor?" 
His empire is not bounded by this mountain 
or by that sea ; his dominion is not limited 
within this age or period ; all kingdoms rise 
within his territories, and aggrandize his 
empire equally by their continuance, or their 
fall. All potentates are his tributaries— the 
meanest of their vassals are not more depen- 
dant on him. All nations are bound to come 
and worship before the Lord ; yea, all worlds 
to attend on the intimations of his pleasure. 
Angels, the host of heaven, the highest orders 
of the celestial host, thrones and principali- 
ties, and powers, do homage at his footstool; 
for all that is in the heaven and on the earth 
is his ; all things serve him ; his, is the great- 
ness, and the power, and the glory, and the 
victory, and the majesty. From the world in 
which we live, to the heaven of heavens where 
he resides, all worlds obey him ; from the 
dust on which we tread, to the Seraphim thtft 
stand before his face, all creatures, willing or 

H3 



.'172 

unwilling, execute his purposes, and contri- 
bute to his glory; the living and the dead 
are both alike under his government. Un- 
limited and endless, his kingdom extends 
throughout immensity, and endures through- 
out all generations. "The Lord reigneth ; 
let the earth tremble !" 

2d, If God be the great Ruler of the 
world, and governs it without interruption 
or control, of what infinite importance is his 
favour ? 

If an earthly ruler be our friend, we reckon 
that all our civil interests are secure ; but if 
God doth according to his pleasure, both in 
heaven and in earth, in this world and the 
next, his favour must be life, and his loving 
kindness must be even better than life. It 
must be of all things the most desirable, for 
it comprehends in it all things that are godd. 
If his power could be controlled, if his will 
could be eluded, if his government could be 
interrupted, if any interest of ours lay with- 
out the reach of his sceptre and his influence, 
we might then occasionally hesitate concern- 
ing the importance of his favour, and deli- 
berate whether at this season or in that cir- 
cumstance we stood in need of it. But, at 
all seasons and in all circumstances being 
absolutely in his hands, holding our lives and 



173 

comforts at his pleasure, suffering only 
through his appointment, and prolonging our 
days in joy or in sorrow according to his will; 
capable, if he pleasethj of immortal happi- 
ness, and liable, if he commands it, to ever- 
lasting destruction, unable to resist him, and 
unable to recommend ourselves to any who 
can maintain our interests against God, what 
is it that should be the first object of our 
anxiety, what is it that should be the constant 
subject of our concern, but that, without 
which we must be wretched; possessed of 
which, no enmity can hurt us, and no evil 
overwhelm or injure us? Would you that 
your friends should love you, make a friend 
of God ; would you that their neglect, if 
they do neglect you, should be better to you 
than their love, make a friend of God ; would 
you that your enemies should be at peace 
with you, be ye reconciled to Heaven ; would 
you that their hatred should promote your 
interests, take care that you have an interest 
in God ; Would you prosper in the world, you 
cannot do it without his help. Say not, that 
your prosperity may be the result of the right 
and vigorous application of your own powers: 
ask yourselves from whom those powers are 
derived ; by whom those powers are con- 
tinued to you, and who it is that forms the con- 

H 3 



174 

nexions and constitutes the conjunctures that 
are favourable to the right and successful 
application of your powers. Whatever are 
your views in life, you cannot attain them 
without God; and though he should assist 
you to attain them, yet still you cannot im- 
prove your real interests, you cannot enjoy 
them in unallayed comfort, without God. 
Would you that your souls should prosper ? 
it must be through his blessing. Are you 
weary of affliction ? there is no aid but in the 
divine compassion. Are you burdened with 
a load of guilt? there is no hope for you but 
in the divine mercy. Is your heart sad? 
your comfort must come from God. Is you 
soul rejoicing? God must prolong your joy, 
or, like the burning thorn, it will blaze and 
die. Does your unexperienced youth need 
to be directed ? God must be your guide. 
Does your declining age need to be sup- 
ported? God must be your strength. The 
vigour of your manly age will wither if God 
does not nourish and defend it; and even 
prosperity is a curse, if God does not give a 
heart to relish and enjoy it. All hearts, all 
powers, are bis: seek ye then the Lord while 
he may be found ; seek his favour with your 
whole souls; it is a blessing that will well 
reward all that you can sacrifice to purchase 



175 

it ; it is a blessing without which nothing else 
can bless you. His patience, though you are 
wicked, may perhaps, for a moment, suffer you 
to triumph, but do not thence conclude that 
you enjoy his favour. If a good conscience 
do not tell you so, believe no other witness ; 
for all the pleasures that you boast are but 
like the pleasures of a bright morning and 
a gaudy equipage to the malefactor going to 
his execution^. Every moment you are in 
jeopardy, and every moment may put an end 
to your triumphs, and transform your joys 
and hopes into desperate and helpless misery. 
It is but for God to leave you, and you are 
left by every thing you delight in, and aban- 
doned to every thing you fear. It is but for 
God to will it so, and this night your reason 
shall forsake you, your health shall fail you, 
your friends on whom you lean shall fall, and 
your comforts, in which you are rejoicing, 
shall distress you. It is but for God to will 
it so, and this moment shall begin a series 
of perplexities, and fears, and griefs, which in 
this world shall never end. It is but for God 
to will it so, and this night thy soul shall be 
ejected from its earthly tabernacle, this night 
thy last pulse shall beat, and thy last breath 



' Doddridge on the Care of the Soul. 

H4 



170 

expire, and thine eyes, for ever closed upon 
all thou hast loved upon earth, shall be open- 
ed upon all thou dreadst in heaven. 

No, my brethren, there is not a moment's 
safety but in peace with God ; there is not a 
moment's solid comfort but in friendship with 
our Maker. In every season, and in every 
state of life, his favour is absolutely necessary 
to our happiness. What infatuation, then, 
has seized the sons of reason and of foresight, 
that they seek first what they fondly wish for, 
whatever it is that their hearts desire ; and 
purpose, if they purpose at all, afterwards to 
seek for that favour which alone can fulfil the 
desires of their heart, and without which their 
wishes never can be gratified ! 

Let the time past suffice you to have held 
so shameful, and absurd, and dangerous a con- 
duct. Who in his senses would live at enmity 
with him who has all power in his hands? 
Who, that pretends to reason, would delay a 
moment to secure his friendship if he might 
obtain it? Give no sleep to your eyes, or 
slumber to your eyelids, till you can congra- 
tulate yourselves that God is yours, and you 
are God's. Better had you sleep in the storm 
upon the precipice, than close your eyes till 
you have made peace with God. Dismissing 
then every other thought, suspending every 



177 

vain pursuit of this world, go cast yourselves 
at the footstool of your Maker, bewail your 
guilt, deprecate his anger, bind yourselves in 
an everlasting covenant to serve him and 
obey him; entreat his mercy for the past, and 
his grace for what is yet to come. Acknow- 
ledging in words the providence of God, let 
it also be acknowledged in works. Choose 
not your portion with the hypocrite ; and if 
you are ashamed to be numbered with the 
unbelieving, let not your consciences con- 
demn you, let not your own hearts convict 
you. Where all your interests are deposited, 
thither let all your cares be directed. Where 
all your dependence is, there be your first 
and your most perfect homage paid. Culti- 
vate in your hearts a lively and abiding con- 
viction of the importance of the divine 
favour ; cherish in your souls the devoutest 
aspirations after it. While the many are 
crying out, u who will show us any good," 
say ye, " Lord, lift thou up the light of 
" thy countenance upon us," and that shall 
put more joy and gladness into our hearts 
than the greatest affluence of worldly pos- 
sessions. Labour after it as the sum of 
humao happiness, and pray for it as the com- 
pletion of all you can desire. Study how 
you may, in all things, walk so as to please 

H 5 



17S 

God ; " for when a man's ways please the 
" Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at 
" peace with him," and then will the great 
Ruler of the world own you for his friends 
when ye do whatsoever he commands you. 



DISCOURSE TWELFTH. 



Lamentations iii. S7« 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

In our practical reflections drawn from this 
subject, we have already observed, 

1. How glorious an idea does this give of 
the divine excellence and majesty ! 

2. That if God be the great Ruler of the 
world, and governs it without interruption 
or control, every other good must be light in 
the balance compared with his favour. We 
come now to remark, 

In the third place, that if God be the 
Ruler of the world, and disposes all things 
according to his pleasure, how strongly does 
this justify, and how loudly does this call for 
all the duties and exercises of religion. 

Shall God reign over universal nature, and 
dispose all events for the benefit of his sub<* 

H 6 



180 

jects, and not a knee be bended at his foot- 
stool, not one act of reverence and adoration 
be presented at his throne ? Would you for- 
feit the character of reason by such expres- 
sions of your reverence? Is it absurd and 
indefensible to signify your respect to those 
whom you acknowledge your superiors, and 
whose excellences you esteem among the 
children of men ? Do the features of modesty, 
do the tokens of sensibility offend you? Does 
the mind that thinks humbly of itself disgust 
you, when, without affectation or imperti- 
nence, it reveals the sense it has of the ex- 
cellency and the worth of others? When the 
inhabitants of heaven are described to you as 
standing before God, covering their faces 
with their wings, and crying, " Holy, holy, 
" holy, is the Lord of hosts ; the whole earth 
" is filled with his glory." When they as- 
cribe " glory, and honour, and thanks to him 
" that sitteth on the throne, and that liveth 
" for ever and ever," do they appear to you 
erroneous? Do they appear to you con- 
temptible ? Are they doing what is weak to 
excite your pity, or what is wrong to provoke 
your indignation ? The sentiments of your 
own hearts, for you are contemplating his 
sincere and humble worshippers, will super- 
sede the necessity of any arguments to con- 



181 

vince you that it is meet, and fit, and laudable ; 
that since God is the Creator and the Sove- 
reign of the universe, the homage of his in- 
telligent creation should not be withheld from 
him. " The praise of God should endure for 
" ever." 

Again : if God has all blessings in his 
hands, life and death, good and evil, at his 
disposal, is it undatiful, is it indecent, humbly 
to acknowledge our dependence upon him, 
and devoutly to pour out our hearts before 
him ? If ail the comforts in which we rejoice 
come down from God, if they be the fruit of 
his pure liberality and unwearied goodness, 
shall no sentiments of religion consecrate that 
joy ? Shall we brutally be engrossed bj the 
enjoyments, and not one grateful thought be 
directed to the giver? Would this diminish 
our delight in them? Would this sink us in 
his esteem ? Would ibis defeat us of his 
future favours? If we have violated his laws 
who has a perfect right to give us laws, and 
has it in his power perfectly to vindicate their 
honour; is it becoming, is it honourable, is 
it ingenuous, is it prudent, to palliate that 
which can neither be justified nor concealed? 
to live for ever in the presence of God, as 
if we never had transgressed ; to walk m his 
sight, and yet carefully to avoid, or obsti- 



182 

uately to withhold all tokens of repentance 
and all expressions of contrition ? If God 
were not the Ruler of the world, if his laws 
did not bind us, if his bounty did not bless 
us, if our fate were not in his hands, upon 
these suppositions there would be a flagrant 
impropriety in addressing to him our prayers, 
our confessions, or our praise. But Lord as 
he is of universal nature, willing as he is to 
attend to your addresses, ready as he is to 
accept you in your approaches to him, re- 
quiring, as he does, that you shall ask of him 
what you would obtain, and refusing to bestow 
upon you the best blessings that you can re- 
ceive, unless confiding in the duties of reli- 
gion as the means and the condition of ob- 
taining them, you implore them of him the 
Father of lights, whose promise is engaged 
to give good things unto them that ask him. 

Teink ye, who carelessly, thoughtlessly, 
irreverently pass through life in the habitual 
negiect of religious worship, whose families 
never join in dutiful addresses to our common 
Lord and Father, whose closets, perhaps, 
never see you but when worldly business 
draws you thither; ye who causelessly for- 
sake, or indolently attend on the public insti- 
tutions of religion ; consider seriously on what 
principles you will justify yourselves when. 



18S 

for all these things, God shall call you into 
judgment.* Your own conduct will condemn 
you ; by your own practices you will be con- 



* It is exceedingly to be lamented that there should be per- 
sons who, upon the whole, in all the various relations of 
domestic and social life must be esteemed worthy and respecta- 
ble characters, who are not occasionally, it may be, without devo- 
tional feelings, and are far from being speculative unbelievers^ 
and who yet must be ranked in the class above described. They 
do not indeed resort to the coffee-house, the tavern, or the 
gaming-table ; but their Sunday is regularly spent in occupa- 
tions, if not so criminal, yet certainly in a manner not more ap- 
propriate — in settling their accounts perhaps, in travelling, in 
reading some work of imagination, or in writing letters of busi- 
ness. Alas ! on what principle shall we account for this ? Is 
the indisposition to social worship, and the total neglect of the 
sabbath, the effect of habit ? The question occurs, How has a 
habit so contrary to the demands of duty, and so inimical to pro- 
gressive improvement in virtue and piety, been originally formed ? 
Did the neglect at first begin by observing that many who regu- 
larly attend the worship of the sanctuary, if not so openly profli- 
gate, are not less selfish and worldly-minded than others ? 
Would you then maintain, that because there are those who are 
mere formalists who have no higher object than merely to 
appear religious, do not profit by their regular attendance on 
the public ordinances of religion, therefore those of happier 
temperament, whose motives are purer and their minds in 
a more healthy state, might not be exceedingly benefited by 
availing themselves of those religious institutions which are 
expressly ordained to correct this insensibility of spirit, and 
gradually to lead on from one degree pf excellence to another ?. 
It were vain, however, to reason on a subject which rests not its 
decisions on the authority of reason. — But were it possible to 



184 

victed. You frown upon your children when 
they treat you with disrespect; you some- 
times expect, that though you know their 
wants, they should ask your help; you expect 
that when they have received it, they should 
gratefully acknowledge it ; mercifully as you 
are disposed towards them, you resent their 
obstinacy and insensibility if having been 
ttndutiful they remain unhumbled. Your 
superiors on earth, if you have any interest 
dependent on them, with what assiduity do 
you cultivate their favour ; no token of re- 
spect is wanting ; you reverence their pre- 
sence, you thank them for what is past, you 
solicit what you want of them, you carefully 
excuse yourselves for every instance of neg*» 
lect into which you have fallen, you cast 
yourselves on their candour, you are totally 
devoted to them, and grudge them no testi- 
mony of your esteem and your attachment ; it 
may be that you even sacrifice your dignity to 
their vanity, and to recommend yourselves to 



place before the eyes of these delinquents but a very small por- 
tion of the multiplied evils* in respect of others, which arise from 
their negiect, its baneful influence on their children, their ser- 
vants, and their younger companions, there are surely many 
who would break asunder these bonds, whether of habit or pre- 
judice, and who would nobly resolve in future, at whatever ex° 
pense to their immediate feelings, to remove this " stumbl 
block and lamentable rock of offence." Editor. 



185 

those from whom your expectations are, you 
become officious, flattering, and mean ; yet 
who is there in the world to whom you owe 
such obligations as to God, or from whom you 
have such important expectations? Who is 
there that has done for you, what God did 
not put it both in their hearts and in their 
power to do for you ? Or who is there that 
can serve you with any tokens of friendship 
which God must not work in them both to 
will and do ? Who is your greatest, who 
is your ultimate benefactor ? On whom da 
your most important interests depend? Who 
is it that is to decide concerning your con- 
dition in eternity ? Is this true of those to 
whom you are so sincere, so assiduous, and so 
warm in your devotions ? Did they give you 
being? Do they support you in existence? 
Have they all nature at their command? Is 
it true of them that your services can never 
exceed their merit or your duty ? Is it true 
of them that you cannot stand in their sight 
when once they are angry ? Let it not, my 
brethren, be your condemnation that you 
either prostitute to his creatures what you 
owe to God, or withhold from God what he 
has a right to claim from you. Learn wisdom 
of yourselves, and taught by your own con« 
duct in other instances of obligation and de-* 



186 

pendance, give unto the Lord the glory due 
unto his name. 

4. If God be the Ruler of the world, and 
doeth whatever seemeth to him good, how 
terrible a consideration is it to the sinner, how 
comfortable a reflection is it to the righteous ; 
how powerful an argument is it to a faithful, 
cheerful, and unreserved obedience ? 

Consider, sinners, what you are, and what 
you are doing; you are rebels against the 
divine government, in a state of enmity with 
God, and while you continue in your impe- 
nitence, you are setting at defiance the Creator 
and the Ruler of the world : and who are you, 
that you dare provoke a quarrel with the 
Almighty ? Who are you, that you dare con- 
tend with the living God ? Know ye, ye rash, 
unfeeling mortals, how terrible a thing it is 
to fall into his hands? Know ye the means 
of escaping from his wrath ; know ye the 
price that will redeem your souls? Can there 
be a more dreadful idea of an enemy, than, 
that he is immutable, almighty, and immor- 
tal? yet such is God to you, ye impenitent 
and unbelieving, while ye continue such, an 
inexorable, omnipotent, and everlasting enemy. 
Is it any comfort to you that all nature is at 
liis command ? that eternity, as well as time, 
$B under his control? that the seen and un- 



187 
seen worlds are equally under his dominion ? 
Is it any comfort to you that he can make 
your friendships to be your ruin ? that he can 
convert your pleasure into your poison, and 
your security into a snare ? Is it any comfort 
to you, that by your impunity at present he 
can increase your punishment? and by de- 
laying its arrival, aggravate the misery that 
awaits you ? Have you ever thought of the 
terrors of the Lord ? Have you ever seriously 
set yourselves in the condition of that unhappy 
man who has finally resolved upon impeni- 
tence, and brought upon himself the last vial 
of divine indignation ? If you have not, do it 
now. Think, then, that all the evils you can 
dread, and the evils of which the greatest 
temporal distress is scarce a shadow or an 
emblem, are absolutely in the power of God, 
He can collect together every stream of sor- 
row, and pour the dreadful deluge into your 
soul. He can distress you in your going out 
and in your coming in, in your rising and 
in your lying down. He can make your 
labour to be barrenness, your rest to be weari- 
ness, your hope to be disappointment, your 
joys to be bitterness, and all your sensations 
to be agony and anguish. Your being is in 
his hands, and if he will, he can prolong it 
in pure and perfect misery. You body is in 



188 

his hands, and he can cast it into the fire that 
is not quenched ; your soul is in his hands, 
and he can make all its ideas full of pain, and 
all its expectations full of horror. Life is 
his, and he can determine its circumstances 
as he pleases. Death is his, and he can sooth 
its pains with celestial comforts, or superadd 
unto them the most excruciating torments. 
In this life, it is but to speak the word and 
thou shalt be set forth a monument of eternal 
vengeance for the admonition of all who 
might be tempted to provoke the indignation 
of God. 

But, though your plagues should be made 
wonderful, yet all that ends in death is as 
light as the dust of the balance in comparison 
of what begins there ; for not the voice of 
thunder can represent the horrors of that 
voice, when too late repenting ye sue for 
mercy, and receive no answer, but " depart 
" ye cursed :" nor can ail the shrieks of a 
drowning or a burning world image to you 
the hopeless misery of its consequences! 
When the day of grace is over, when the 
patience of God is past, when your ruin is 
for ever sealed, what will it avail to wish that 
you had not bid defiance to the Lord of na- 
ture? What will it avail to wisb that you 
rather had incurred the hatred of every created 



189 

being, for then you might have found a re* 
fuge and a deliverer in God? Have pity on 
yourselves, sinners, and do not wage so un- 
equal and so dangerous a war. God reigns, 
and must reign : let the earth know, and fear, 
and tremble ! 

Happy they who entertain those reverent 
thoughts of God, and cultivate those pious 
dispositions towards him which lead them to 
the imitation of his character, and the obedi- 
ence of his laws. In him they have a friend 
> who is better to them than all other friend- 
ships ; for all hearts and all powers are his. 
Their God is the Lord of nature, and the 
ruler of the universe ; the author and dis- 
poser of all events. Were they themselves 
almighty, they would not be so happy, unless 
they were, at the same time, all- wise ; and if 
they were all- wise, they would at all times 
be what it is the will of God they should be ; 
i. e. what they are. Many other blessings 
they enjoy, which the wicked know not of. 
All nature is kindly disposed and over-ruled 
unto their good ; their good must of necessity 
be promoted, for <c the righteous Lord loveth 
" righteousness, and his counsel standeth firm 
cc for ever, and the thoughts of his heart unto all 
" generations." Exceeding great and precious 
are the promises they are heirs to. Too great 



190 

for the language and conceptions of mortal- 
ity to explain, but not too great for God to 
verify. 

Ye may indulge your sublimest wishes, 
ye children of God ; ye may exercise the 
firmest faith, for your Father and your Friend 
who loves you, is Almighty. Nothing but his 
wisdom can limit his beneficence ; nothing 
but your apostasy can defeat you of his pro- 
mises. Through life he attends you with a 
shepherd's care, in death he will sustain you 
w T ith a parent's pity, and after death will 
display to you all the glory and munificence 
of an all-bountiful Creator: " Rejoice then, 
" in the Lord, ye righteous, for praise is 
" comely for the upright." As our obedience 
promotes our joy, let our joy enliven our obe- 
dience ; as we hope, ere long, to begin the 
better duties of a better world, let us do what 
we can to make a heaven of this earth. Let 
us exhort one another to obedience, and call 
upon one another to be glad, saying, praise 
our God all ye his servants, and ye that fear 
him, both small and great. " Hallelujah, 
" for the Lord God omnipotent is King. — 
" Let us be glad, and rejoice, and give honour 
" to him that sitteth on the throne for ever 
" and ever." 



DISCOURSE THIRTEENTH, 



Lamentations iii. 37- 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS^ 
WHEN THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

i-N the progress of our practical remarks, we 
observed, 

3. That if God disposes all things accord- 
ing to his pleasure, how strongly does this 
justify, and how loudly does this call for, all 
the duties and exercises of religion ? 

4. How terrible a consideration must the 
uncontrollable power of God be to the sinner, 
and how comfortable a reflection to the right- 
eous. 

We come now to observe, 

5. That if God be a great King over all 
the earth, then we, of whatever nation, tongue, 
or kindred, are all fellow subjects. 

Strictly and properly there is but one 
King ; we are all his vassals and his servants. 
Differing in name, in all essential circum- 
stances we differ not at all : we are all the crea- 



192 

tures, and therefore we are all the subjects 
of the same great King ; and whatever con- 
vulsions agitate the world, his kingdom can- 
not be moved. What is your family or mine? 
Nothing but collateral branches of the one 
great family of God. What is your rank in 
life, and what is mine? However the world 
may have distinguished them by the names 
of high and low, in reality, they are nothing 
but the offices which our common Father hath 
assigned us in his own great house. Let 
pride hear this, and be abashed ; let modesty 
attend to it, and be comforted. Let all who 
are capable of just and humane affections 
yield their hearts unto its influences, and re- 
gard all mankind as the subjects of the same 
King, and the children of the same family. 
One day they will find that in the eye of God 
they were so, let them therefore regard the 
miseries of others as a demand upon their 
compassion, the wants of others as a claim 
on their abundance, and the difficulties of 
others as a motive to the kind and the liberal 
exertion of their powers to relieve and bless 
them. Thus they will be, indeed, the chil- 
dren of their heavenly Father ; otherwise 
they can neither be like God, nor be loved 
by him. 



193 

6. If the world be ruled by God, and all 
things proceed according to his direction and 
appointment, how reasonable is it that we 
should cheerfully submit unto the present, and 
lay aside all anxieties about the future ! 

Is there something in your lot that you do 
not relish? mend it if you can ; God gives 
you the power that you may use it. If you 
cannot, why do you repine ? If was God who 
appointed it unto you ; God's will must be 
done, and your's opposes it in vain. By your 
cheerful acquiescence you may make a virtue 
of necessity, and transform your afflictions 
into blessings. By your fretfulness and dis- 
content you add affliction to affliction, you 
pervert the design of Providence in visiting 
you with them, you turn sorrows into crimes, 
you lose all the benefit of the divine visita- 
tions, you fondly throw away the occasions, 
and the means of dignifying your character, 
and magnifying your reward : you renounce 
the consolations of God #nd a good consci- 
ence, and double the burdens that might have 
sat very light upon you, had you but possessed 
your soul in patience, and in well doing com- 
mitted your interest to Heaven. 

If my conscience does not smite me for 
my transgressions, if my heart does not teach 
me that my sufferings are the punishment of 

I 



194 

my sins, and the ministers of God to awaken 
me to repentance, how soothing is the thought 
that I am not the sport of chance, or aban- 
doned to a miserable fatality, but the care, 
the charge of Providence and God. How 1 
reviving is the thought, that all my sorrows 
come from thence, whence all my blessings 
flow. Is this cup administered by God, and 
shall I refuse to drink it ? shall I drink it 
with reluctance and repining ? that would be 
undutiful to him, and unfriendly to myself, for 
God, surely, never can be cruel to his people ; 
God, surely, never can be deaf to their com- 
plaints ; " he knows our frame, and remem- 
" bers that we are dust." The almighty God, 
the Lord of nature, hath no interests to seek 
but the interests of his people. Wise as he 
is in counsel, abundant as he is in means, let 
me inculcate it upon my heart, that a more 
grateful would have been a less friendly lot, 
and that no other disposition of my person, 
of my affairs, of my circumstances, or of my 
friends, could so perfectly have answered 
the gracious purposes he bears to me ; if, 
therefore, my hopes are blasted, believe, my 
soul, the blight is better for thee than the 
bloom; if my cares and labours have been 
frustrated, the disappointment is better for 



195 

thee than success.* If thou be in heaviness, 
it is not without need ; some end thy afflic- 
tions have, and that end is good, because God 
is love. If a friend has wounded me, if an 
enemy has injured me, let me not resent it ; 
let me not indulge my wrath ; let me not con- 
fine my attention unto them ; let me ask, who 
bade them strike me ? who placed me in their 
reach ? let me consider it as the deed of God, 
and let me say, " It is the Lord, do with me 
" what seemeth to thee good/' While I sit 
under the shadow of affliction, how does it 
compose my mind, and reconcile me to my 
state ; how does it gild the gloom, and make 



* Of the great efficacy of a firm practical belief in this most 
important doctrine, so honorable to God, so consolatory to man, 
his erring, frail, imperfect creature, " whose life is even as a 
shadow which soon vanisheth away," there cannot be a more 
striking instance than in the example of the author of these 
Discourses. Subject in early youth, and particularly whilst at 
college, to distressing head-achs,^uffering afterwards repeated 
heavy losses, and exposed to many trying privations, his forti- 
tude and habitual serenity of mind never for a moment forsook 
him : it is of God, was the language of his heart, let him do 
what seemeth to him best ! Afterwards, in the year 1791, when 
many days of future usefulness seemed yet to remain, and many 
subjects of desirable investigation were still unfinished, he was 
suddenly attacked by a severe stroke of the palsj r , which not 
only put a stop to his literary labours, but wholly disabled him 
for ever resuming those ministerial duties which were always 
his joy and delight. From this he gradually and slowly, though 

12 



190 

adversity put on a smile ; to think that it 
was God who led me thither, and that it 
is God who sustains me there! Peace then, 
rny rising passions ; courage, my dejected 
soul; collect thy fortitude, maintain thy cha- 
racter, hold fast thy hope, and let faith wipe 
away thy tears, u Although the fig-tree shall 
" not blossom, neither shall there be fruit in 
" the vine ; though the labour of the olive 
6; shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat ; 
" though the flock should be cut off from the 
* s fold, and there should be no herd in the stall, 
" yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in 
" the God of my salvation. 5 ' 



fcut imperfectly recovered, when in the year 1793, a second 
attack, in some respects more severe than the first, seemed to 
threaten the entire destruction of those fine intellectual powers 
which the former had injured but not annihilated. Of all this 
he was fully sensible : " I once knew a little, 5 * he was accus- 
tomed to say ; but not a complaint or a murmur, through the 
wearisome day or the tedious winter evening, ever escaped him. 
He was uniformly cheerful, and always truly thankful that he 
could sometimes dictate to an amanuensis from his interesting 
short-hand papers (of which these Discourses formed a part), 
leaving what might or might not be their future usefulness in 
His hands " of whom, and to whom, and through whom are 
all things." 

Reader, in the hour of anxiety and distress, be this also thy 
consolation— That " the Lord is righteous in all his ways, and 
holy in all his works :" a strong rock and tower of defence to 
all those who put their trust in his goodness ! Editor. 



197 

Thus said the prophet. Happy prophet! 
we admire thy piety, we reverence thy faith. 
And are we then under a better dispensation, 
under a more glorious Exemplar, under a more 
illustrious display of the divine mercy and 
compassion, and are we yet to teach in the 
great duties of resignation and of trust in God? 
Make haste, my friends, to learn the impor- 
tant and delightful lesson, for there is no true 
peace in this uncertain, changeful world, till 
ye can rejoice in the government of God, and 
say, in the unaffected triumphs of devotion, 
sc Father, glorify thy name ; not any will, but 
" thine, O God, be done." 

A JUST acquiescence in the present, will 
banish all solicitude about the future ; the 
same principles will cure you both of discon- 
tent and of anxiety. If it be a just deduction, 
that because God reigneth my present lot is 
good, a true occasion of satisfaction and 
thanksgiving ; it is as reasonable a conclu- 
sion, that because God will reign for ever, the 
future lot of all who dutifully commend their 
interests to him, shall for ever be dispensed 
to them with unerring wisdom, and with per- 
fect lov$. Quit, then, your cares, my friends, 
and cast your burdens on God. Take an 
apostle's counsel: i; Be careful for nothing, 
-" but in all tbiags, by prayer and suppliea- 

13 



198 

ie tion with thanksgiving, let your requests 
" be made known unto God ; and that peace 
<j of his, which passeth understanding, shall 
" keep your hearts and minds through Christ 
" Jesus." 

I know not what the present hour is lead- 
ing on, and why should I wish to know ? The 
government of the world is not mine ; it is 
in better hands; in the best hands; in the 
hands of God : and can you not trust God ? 
can his wisdom err? can his power fail? can 
his goodness hurt you? If he offer thee the 
determination of thy own circumstances, 
wouldst thou not be a fool to take it ? If thou 
inewest thyself, wouldst thou not most earn- 
estly deprecate so dreadful a calamity ?-— 
Wouldst thou not most fervently beseech him 
that he would not abandon thee to thine own 
folly, and thy own weakness ? Wouldst thou 
not return the offer unto God, and adore his 
condescension and his grace, that he would 
stoop to notice thee, and to interest himself 
in the management of thy affairs? Mind thosi 
thy duty then, for that is thine; God will 
mipd thy interests, for that is his. Do ye 
the work that he has given you to do; it 
depends on God to provide for your present 
comfort, as well as to pay you yaur last 
reward, 



199 

Many other practical consequences of no 
little moment, might be deduced from the 
providence and government of God. But as 
your time requires me to recall my thoughts, 
I shall only just mention to you the follow* 
ing. 

7. If the government of the world, and the 
disposal of its affairs, be God's, it becomes 
tis, at all times, to maintain a humble sense 
of our dependance upon him, and to form all 
our schemes and purposes not only in con- 
formity to his laws, so that we propose nothing 
that is wrong, but also in submission to his 
pleasure and appointment, so that we expect 
nothing but as he wills. 

If the government of the world were in our 
Lands, we might take our measures, and form 
our expectations peremptorily and absolutely ; 
since it is not, let us be instructed by those 
reflections that arise frqm this passage of the 
apostle : u Go to now, ye that say to-day or 
" to-morrow we will go into such a city, and 
<c continue there a year, and buy and sell, 
" and get gain, whereas ye know not what 
" shall be on the morrow, for that ye ought 
" to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and 
" do this or that. 5 ' 

Finally, my brethren, since one is our 
Master, let our hearts be one. Since we are 

14 



the subjects of one empire, the members of 
one family, let us unite our endeavours to 
promote the glory of our King, and the com- 
mon interests of his kingdom. Obedient our- 
selves, let us do what we can to recover the 
disobedient to their allegiance, and to retain 
the faithful in it. To our example, to our 
admonitions, to our remonstrances, to our 
labours, let us add our prayers. With one 
heart, day and night, let us address our com- 
mon Lord, and say unto him, in the words 
of his beloved Son, " Thy kingdom come, 
" and thy will be done, on earth as it is in 
" -heaven." Amen, 



DISCOURSE FOURTEENTH. 



Lamentations iii. 37. 

WHO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WHEN 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT? 

In our last Discourse on the practical re- 
marks arising from this subject, we observed, 

5. That if God be a great King over all 
the earth, then we, of whatever nation, 
tongue, or kindred, are all fellow subjects. 

6. That if the world be ruled by God, and 
all things proceed according to his direction 
and appointment, how reasonable is it that 
we should submit cheerfully to the present* 
and lay aside all anxiety about the future? 

7. That if the government of the wor!d 5 
and the disposal of its affairs, be God's, it 
becomes us, at all times, to maintain a humble 
sense of our dependence upon him. We- 
would now observe 3 

I 5 



202 

8. That if God is the supreme ruler of alt 
events, we may hope well concerning the 
issues of this present scene. 

Whence came evil? is a question, the 
solution of whie]j, even from the earliest ages 
w hereof we have any information, has been 
most anxiously sought for by the thoughtful 
and the serious among mankind. It seems 
that this question had occupied the minds of 
men long before the earliest records of the 
human race that are come down to us, for 
even in the story of the creation there seems 
to be continually an oblique reference to the 
evil that was in the world, and the origin of 
that evil, in the reflection thai the narrator 
adds, at the end of every day's work con- 
cerning the productions of that day, viz. 
,« God saw that it was good." The gradual 
improvements of science have been gradually 
lessening the painful impressions which the 
appearance of evil, in the works of God, is 
apt to make upon a pious and reflective mind. 
Many things, both in nature and in provi- 
dence, which, in the eyes of former ages 
hung like a thick cloud upon the glories of 
the divine character, to us, more advantage- 
ously situated, and better furnished for the 
view, reflect those glories in the clearest and 
most striking light. From this consideration 



203 

there arises no inconsiderable degree of hope, 
that the time will come, perhaps, in this 
world, when our successors of the human 
race shall see, with full conviction, that even 
those things which now remain with us as 
difficulties in the creation and providence of 
God, are no less faithful witnesses of his wis* 
dom and his goodness, than those plainer and 
more obvious instances of them which we 
most cordially admire and praise. The im- 
provements of science concur with the decla- 
rations of religion to assure us, that " the 
f counsel of the Lord standeth firm for ever ;" 
that " without him nothing comes to pass ;" 
and, that as all things were created, so all 
things are disposed and governed by a power 
that is uncontrollable, directed by unerring 
wisdom., and actuated by the purest senti- 
ments of benignity and love. " Is there evil 
" in the city," saith the prophet, " and the 
<« Lord hath not done it?" If God be the 
sovereign ruler of the world, though the ques- 
tion were asked of every city in every region 
of the earth, the reply must be in God's gwq 
language; " I kill and I make alive; I form 
" the light and create darkness; I make peace 
?.' and create evil ; I the Lord, do all these 
" things." Who could, do them but himself" 
tot there is not a power in nature that is not 

16 



204 

under his control; not a principle but derives 
its being from him. How important is this 
truth ! How joyful are its consequences 
Of what moment to the peace and happiness 
of mankind! How full of hope and conso- 
lation ! € All I feel and all I fear, does it 
c come, and must it come from God ? Then 

* my sufferings are blessings, for in God there 
c is no malignity ; my pains and my appre-. 
f hensions are good for me ; though for the 

* present not joyous but grievous, they will 

* yield to me hereafter a far more exceeding 
f and more lasting weight of glory.'* For the 
present in appearance, deformed and offensive 
like the putrifying seed, like that seed arisen 
up into verdure, bloom, and fragrance, and 
abounding with inviting and refreshing fruits, 
our present troubles must become hereafter 



* How strikingly, whilst this edition has been preparing for 
the press, has the unspeakable importance been exemplified of 
deeply impressing these great and momentous truths upon the 
heart and mind. In the beginning of the present month, how 
elate with hope and joy was every British bosom ; haw fondly 
anticipating many future years of national prosperity and peace 
under the judicious auspices of a most amiable, virtuous prin-. 
cess, and her illustrious descendants, of whose excellent edu- 
cation the greatest hopes were formed frorn the high character 
of the parents, so marked by moderation, by good sense, and by 
exemplary conduct ! Alas ! in a few short days, how has the 
prospect changed, how afSictingly has the bright scene been 



205 

our delights : if not in this world, yet in some 
better world to come they will bless us with 
their friendly shade, and will yield us, to use 
the apostle's language, " the fruits of righte- 
" ness, which are life, and peace, and joy, 
" for evermore." 

In the eye of God the previous evil coales- 
ces with the following good, and is absorbed 
in the superior happiness that it produces. 
What he sees in prospect we shall behold in 
retrospect. When death has purged our 
sight, and enlarged our sphere of observation, 
when the great year of God's government 
has gone round, when every principle of this 
preparatory state has put forth all its influ- 
ences, and the harvest is fully come, then, in 
our view, will the sufferings of this life be 
swallowed up in the enjoyment of the next, 
and nothing will present itself before us but 



overcast, and the future prospects of these united kingdoms en- 
veloped in clouds and darkness ! In vain will the future histo- 
rian endeavour to pourtray the heartfelt sorrow at this moment, 
so universally felt ! May his faithful page be enabled to record 
that the sad event produced a salutary effect on the national 
character, anql more especially in the higher ranks of life ; that 
many of the licentious were overawed, the profligate reclaimed^ 
and the proud and arrogant brought to confess " that the Most 
" High God ruleth in the kingdoms of men, and appointed 
« over them whomsoever he will*" Editor, 
November 19, 181 7.. 



me 

#ne immense survey in every object, and in 
every occurrence glorifying the great Lord 
of all, and prompting us to praise him* and 
rejoice in him for ever ! 

The clouds that hang upon this present 
scene shed no more darkness on it than that 
with which God has chosen to overcast it. If 
God be good, and there be no power by 
which his power is controllable, the clouds 
must vanish, and the scone must brighten, 
and all must end well at la&t. Pain must 
cease ; error must have an end ; vice must 
be extirpated ; death must be destroyed ; and 
the scene which these glorious revolutions 
will lead on must be better in the whole, and 
to every individual of God's faithful subjects 
better than the issue could have been frorp 
any other initiatory scene, in which error, 
vice, and pain, and death; had had no place, 
These glorious revolutions you will see ; God 
grant that you may have a joyful share ia 
them. Fix yourselves, my friends, in the 
firm persuasion of this truth ; for if God be 
the King eternal and immortal, an indisputa- 
ble truth it is. Fix yourselves in the firra 
persuasion of it. It will animate your obe* 
ice to the will of God, it will compose you 
into the most placid resignation to his plea« 
, it will enable you to think well of life, 



20? 

and of all its circumstances and vicissitudes.; 
it will reconcile you even to death itself, and 
support you under all that you must suffer 
from it. 

To attain this state of mind ii may help 
you to remember the example of Jesus. His 
day of duty was dark and cloudy, thick over- 
spread with sorrow, beset with difficulties, 
and ending in the aeutest sufferings., and the 
most painful death. But did he desert his 
duty because it was difficult .?■ And how did 
all this suffering end? Is he now in heavi- 
ness, despised, reviled, combating with error 
and prejudice ? No, my friends, he, our grea,t 
Exemplar, is sat down on the right-hand of 
God ; he has led captivity captive; and if we, 
like him, are faithful unto death, we al&Q 
shall receive a crowa.of life. 

9. Iv the Lord God Almighty reigneth, 
then there is no other power to whom we 
can owe an unlimited and unreserve^ obedi- 
ence. 

For the powers that be, are of God; they 
are his creatures and his subjects, and have 
no authority but that which is derived froni 
him ; against his authority, therefore, their 
authority is nothing. By whatever penal 
sanctions their injunctions, or their prohibi- 
tions, may be. guarded, with you 3 Christian, 



208 

they are to have no weight ; for where their 
demands interfere with the demands of God, 
you have a very clear and peremptory rule to 
guide you. u Fear not them," says the great 
Legislator of the Christian church, " fear 
" not them who can kill the body, and after 
u that have no more that they can do : but 
" I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear; 
" fear him, who after he hath killed, hath 
" power to cast both soul and body into hell; 
" yea, I say unto you, fear him." You may 
have come under authority by your birth, by 
your own personal engagements, or by the 
deed of Providence ; but your submission to 
such authority, if it has no other bounds, must 
always be with exception and reserve for your 
absolute submission to the supreme authority 
of God. This exception extends not only to 
the obedience that parents and masters may 
require of you, it affects alike the obedience 
that civil governors may demand of you, and 
the subjection that you owe to parliaments 
and kings. Disobey God, and who can screen 
you from the justice of the only Potentate? 
but of the only Potentate what doubt can 
you entertain that, in asserting his authority 
against every other, he will defend you against 
their resentment, or indemnify you for all 
that you may suffer from it? Dses any 



209 

human authority demand of you an unlimited 
obedience? reject the demand, for it is an 
impious infringement of the rights of God, 
Passive obedience, unlimited submission, are 
these doctrines preached to you? Tell the 
sycophant who preaches them, that it is an 
absurdity and an iniquity to gratify the am- 
bition of an individual at the expense of the 
whole species; and while thus he seeks to 
bask himself in the sunshine of princely fa- 
vour, he forgets the duty that he owes unta 
the only Potentate, who warrants no man, of 
whatever rank or title, to injure or oppress 
another. Does any human authority attempt 
to interfere in matters of religion, to impose 
upon you articles of faith which Christ has 
not imposed, and to require of you modes of 
worship which Christ has not required? 
Faithful in your allegiance to the only Poten- 
tate, and to him whom he hath constituted 
head over all things to his church, resist that 
authority. In every thing that is virtuous, 
that is innocent, that is indifferent, be ye 
exemplary in your obedience to the powers 
that are set over you ; but in every other 
thing, stand fast in the liberty wherewith 
Christ has made you free : maintain the truth 
as it is in Jesus, and receive you no adultera- 
tion of it ; let your professions ever answer 



£10 

to the convictions of your minds; and on no 
occasion, under no pretence, for no conside- 
ration whatsoever, contract the guilt of hypo- 
crites and unbelievers. Betray any thing 
rather than your Christian privileges; oppose 
any thing rather than the truth of God ; 
forega any thing rather than the comforts of 
good conscience, and incur any thing rather 
than become enemies to the cross of Christ : 
give unto Ceesar every thing that is Caesars ; 
but if Caesar should demand it of you, to 
counteract the convictions of your minds ; if 
he should require of you to receive for Christ- 
ian truth what you are persuaded is not such; 
if he would compel you to deny what you are 
persuaded is, or would only prohibit you to 
profess it ; remembering the superior pre- 
cept of the King eternal and immortal, by 
Christ his oracle and our Lord, tell him with 
respect, but tell him it with firmness too, that 
these things are not his, and give not unto 
Caesar any thing that is God's* 

10. If God be the Sovereign of the uni- 
verse, a great King over all the earth, if with- 
out him nothing come to pass, if all things 
proceed according to the counsels of his will, 
and are regulated by the operations of his 
providence, it becomes us and behoves us to 
pay a serious and continual attention to th§ 
current of events. 



211 

For if it be true, that God is the source, 
the controller and director of all power, what 
are the occurrences of life ? They are the 
deeds of God. And shall an almighty agent 
be continually exhibiting before us the dis- 
plays of wisdom without error, and of good- 
ness without partiality, and y$t we be stupidly 
inobservant of his conduct? The occurrences 
of life discover his perfections, they manifest 
his will, they reveal the principles of his 
government: to an attentive mind, they de- 
clare all these things as intelligibly as his 
works ; they suggest to us many lessons both 
of admonition and of consolation w T hich his 
works cannot read to us ; for in this state of 
discipline, as we have endeavoured to show, 
there is the highest reason to believe, that the 
occurrences of life are accommodated in such 
a manner to our characters and our circura- 
-stances, as to afford us all desirable advantages 
for the enjoyment, or the improvement af 
the present life, for the correction of what 
God approves not in our characters^ and for 
the confirmation and advancement of what 
he does approve. While we pass through 
life, therefore, and the vicissitudes of life, 
without thought, without observation, and 
without reflection, we may miss the lessons, 
that we wa#t> an# we may lose the conspl^ 



212 

lions that we need. Look at the life you live, 
and observe at least what presents itself to 
you in the road that you are travelling. 

Have you seen the fraudulent and insincere 
prospering for a little time by the wiliness 
and the intricacy of their conduct, and at 
length betrayed, exposed, and overwhelmed, 
by the contempt and indignation of mankind? 
Have you seen the sensual and self-indulgent, 
by their inordinate love of pleasure, diverted 
from the noblest pursuits, disqualified for the 
best enjoyment of the present life, and cheated 
even of life itself, while they were yet dream- 
ing of prolonging it in growing jollity and 
self-enjoyment? Have you seen the adula- 
tory and the interested disappointed of the 
objects that they sought, at the expense of so 
much time, and so much truth, and so much 
self-abasement? Have you sedn the upright, 
the honest, the sincere, the contented, the 
undesigning, favoured by Divine Providence, 
perhaps beyond all that their own industrious 
exertions, or probable expectation, could have 
promised? Have you seen the mask pulled 
off from the hypocritical and sanctimonious, 
and all which that mask had, for many years 
perhaps concealed from the observation of 
mankind, exposed to their derision and re-* 
sentment? Have you seen the idle become 



sis 

?ieiotts, and of vicious, profligate, and of 
profligate, incorrigible? Have you seen the 
giddy and the gay become first thoughtless, 
and then averse to thinking, and afterwards 
incapable of thinking, proof against the most 
serious admonitions, and the most affecting 
spectacles, and the most alarming expecta- 
tions? Have you seen the fairest prospects 
blasted, and the sweetest hopes extinguished? 
Have you seen the sweetest hopes accom- 
plished, and yet vexation, bitterness, and 
sorrow, following that accomplishment? Have 
you seen the most unpromising appearances 
issuing, when duty or when prudence called 
to meet them, in peace, in comfort, and in 
happiness? Have you seen the happiest 
connexions broken, and the most unfortunate 
protracted? Have you seen the career of 
hope and joy plunging suddenly into dis- 
tresses and despair? Have you seen the soli- 
tary walk of affliction and of melancholy, 
rising as suddenly into Comfort and enjoy- 
ment? Have you seen the old surviving 
both their pleasures and their usefulness? 
Have you seen the young dying when they 
thought to live, and extended on the bed of 
death when their imaginations had been 
picturing before them a \ery different scene? 
Have you seen the healthy and the strong in 



$14 

the maturity, in the stablest period of life, 
when their dependents rested on them as on a 
rock that should not fail, and when their own 
hearts were exulting ip the prospect of long 
utility and of long improvement; these have 
you seen vanishing as a vapour, and sinking 
suddenly like a full blown flower that has been 
eaten at the root? These things have been 
seen, and they are seen every day. Think, my 
friends, what say these occurrences unto you ? 
There are lessons that they read you, and 
these lessons are so plain and so affecting', 
that if you will attend only to the spectacle 
which is exhibited, you will need no help of 
mine either to interpret or to enforce them. 



DISCOURSE FIFTEENTH, 



Lamentations iii. 37. 

P/BO IS HE THAT SAITH, AND IT COMETH TO PASS, WHE% 
THE LORD COMMANDETH IT NOT ? 

We observed, id our last Discourse, on th6 
practical remarks drawn from the consideration 
of the universal and uncontrollable govern- 
ment of God, 

In the eighth place, that if God is th£ 
supreme Ruler of all events, we may hope 
well concerning the issues of the present 
scene. 

9. That if the Lord God Almighty reign- 
eth, then there is no other power to whom 
we can owe an unlimited and unreserved obe- 
dience. 

10. That if God be the Sovereign of the 
universe, it becomes us and behoves us to 
pay a serious and continual attention to th£ 



216 

current of events, And this brings me in 
the 

11th, and last place, to one of the most im- 
portant, and yet most neglected subjects, in 
the whole of practical religion, namely, that 
if without God nothing comes to pass, it be- 
comes us, and behoves us to acquire, to main- 
tain, and cultivate the spirit of devotion. By 
the spirit of devotion, I understand, an habit- 
ual sense of God upon the heart, a powerful 
tendency of thought towards him, an easy 
susceptibility of every religious affection, a 
lively sensibility of soul to every thing that 
is in God, that comes from God, or is con- 
nected with him ; and a constant proneness 
of mind to unite and intermingle the idea of 
the great Creator and Ruler of the universe 
with all the other thoughts, perceptions, and 
sentiments of our hearts. 

Sura is the temper of which I speak.— 
The man in whom this spirit lives, sees God 
in every thing that surrounds him, or occurs 
to him, and regards him in all he is, and in 
all he does. In his view, the heaven is God's 
throne, and the earth is his footstool. The 
clouds are his chariot, and he walketh on the 
wings of the wind. Does the rising sun awake 
him to his duty ? it is God that has bestowed 
on him another day. Does the night inter- 



917 

nipt his labours ? it is God who invites him 
to refreshment and repose. Does he cast his 
eye upon the busy scenes of life ? it is God 
who, by their social principles and mutual 
wants, has bound mankind unto each other, 
and united them in families, and cities, and 
communities. Retiring from the busy scenes 
of life, does he lift his eye by night unto the 
starry firmament ? it is the breath of God 
that has kindled those immortal fires, By day 
does he fix his view upon the swelling ocean, 
watching how its waves succeed to spend them- 
selves and die upon the shore ? it is the hand 
of God that sunk the channel they possess, 
and it is his decree which has prescribed to 
them a bound that they may not pass. Do 
the gayer and mor£ varied beauties of the 
earth on which he stands invite his contem* 
plation ? it is God that has lifted up those aw* 
ful hills, and it is the same mighty hand that 
waters and adorns those fruitful valleys : it is 
God that variegates the vernal bloom, that 
enfiches the autumnal harvest, that raises, and 
directs, and restrains, and employs, unto the 
wisest and the kindest purposes, the summer's 
warmth, and the winter's storm*, he provi- 
$eth both for man and beast. 

To him, in whose heart the spirit of devo- 
tion reigns, all nature is a book, in which he 
reads of God, or a mirror in which he sees 

K 



£18 

the image of his glorious perfections. Every 
unconscious being is a monument that bears 
inscribed upon it the signature of omnipo- 
tence ; and every individual of the sensible 
creation is a member of his mighty family, 
who openeth his hand, and satisfieth the de- 
sires of every living thing. Is such a man 
in health and prosperity ? God is his sun and 
shield: is his health declining, and his com- 
fort failing, and his substance wasting? it is 
God that is taking from him what he gave. 
Is he injured and oppressed by the wicked? 
the wicked are God's sword. Do those of 
better character, of milder temper, and more 
candid judgment, esteem, and protect, and 
help him ? they are the instruments of divine 
mercy, and the almoners of divine bounty, 
Have the works, the providences, the word, 
or ordinances of God, excited in his heart 
the sacred sentiments of piety? he relishes 
these blessed affections ; he is well pleased 
that they have found their way into his heart ; 
he likes his heart the better that it is so well 
affected towards God. He does not willingly 
or hastily expose it to the influence of any 
foreign objects, however innocent their in- 
fluence might be. He finds too great a plea- 
sure in the consciousness of devout affections 
to sacrifice them at the shrine of vanity or 
dissipation, or at any other shrine. He keeps 



219 

his heart with all diligence, that it may not 
be forsaken by such welcome guests ; and it 
is an object of serious attention, and of studi- 
ous care with him, to cherish and retain them 
in his breast. Is he tempted? he says as 
Joseph did ; how can I do this great wicked- 
ness, and sin against God. Has he erred? 
the language of his heart sunk in contrition 
and repentance is, " Father, I have sinned 
cc against heaven, and in thy sight." Has he 
overcome temptation and done well? it is 
God that has preserved him from the accusa- 
tions of an evil conscience. " By his grace," 
says he, " I am what I am." 

Such is the spirit of devotion, and such the 
character of the man in whom it breathes. 
Can there be a character, can there be a tem- 
per more correspondent to the conviction of 
this important truth, that without God, nothing 
is, and nothing comes to pass? that as he is 
the first great parent mind, so he is the 
only Potentate? Would the contrary dis- 
positions, would the opposite affections, cor- 
respond as well to this conviction ? There 
needs not a single word to satisfy you fully, 
that they would not. 

If God be the only Potentate, and such 
you have seen he is ; if he be the source of 
power, the controller of events, the spring by 
which every movement of the universe is 

K2 



actuated; if it is God that gives us under- 
standing, God is, and is observing, and is 
acting, in all places at all times ; and if God 
be every where, in what place can it become 
us to forget him? And if God at all times 
encompasses our path, and our lying down, 
and is at all times within our hearts, at what 
hour can it become us to be regardless and 
insensible of him? If there is not one scene 
in nature but speaks to us of an invisible 
% reator ; if in providence there is not one 
occurrence but speaks to us of an invisible 
Disposer of the world and its affairs, in what 
scene can it become us to shut up our hearts 
sgainst the influence of those divine perfec- 
tions it displays ; or in respect of what occur- 
rence is it decent that we should not own the 
hand of God ? If it is -God that gives us under- 
standing, if it is God that gives external 
nature the power to awaken in us those ideas, 
find those sentiments of which that under- 
standing is conscious, is it right, approvable, 
^and laudable, that God should not be in all 
our thoughts? If ail things are full of God, 
can that heart be what it should be that is 
devoid of pious sentiments and devout affec- 
tions? £Jone of you wijl say so; and none 
of you can think so. 

In a world, where every Horn has its place 
appointed it by God, where net a motion 



221 

rises but it is God that actuates it, cor a 
thought exists but it is God that gives it 
being, in such a world, what can be more 
"unamiable, what more unnatural or more 
unjustifiable, than an indevout and irreligious 
heart? Observe, my friends, the consequences 
that this position will draw after it. World- 
liness is a great enemy to devotion, and dissi- 
pation is as great an enemy. What then are 
we to think of worldliness and of dissipa- 
tion ? Can we approve them ? Shall we vin- 
dicate them ? May we allow ourselves in 
them? Your own hearts will make the an- 
swer for me, and to them I can appeal, that 
w T hile you are engrossed by the interests or the 
vanities of this world, you are by no means 
so sensible as you yourselves think you ought 
to be, to the power, the benignity, and the 
various perfections of that unseen hand which 
governs it. While your hearts are continually 
exposed to the influences of this world, they 
grow callous and incapable of sublimer senti- 
ments ; devotion cannot thrive in them. So 
fair a flower will not grow upon the flinty 
rock ; and whoever has conversed with obser- 
vation and attention in the world, whoever 
has remarked the occasional influence of 
worldly cares or vanities upon his own heart, 
would look for the spirit of devotion as soon 
in the marble statue, as for the prevalence 

K3 



222 

of it in their hearts, whose desires are con- 
tinually stretching after the riches, or the 
splendors, or the pleasures of the world. 

Devotion is a delicate and tender plant : as 
much as it is our duty and our interest to be 
possessed of it, it is not easily acquired, nei- 
ther can it be carelessly maintained. It must 
be long tended, diligently cultivated, and 
affectionately cherished, before it will have 
struck its roots so deep as to grow up and 
flourish in our hearts; and all along, till it at- 
tains to its perfect vigour and maturity in 
heaven, it needs to be defended from the ad- 
verse influences of things seen and temporal, 
of a vain imagination and an earthly mind. 

The best season for acquiring the spirit of 
devotion is in early life : it is then attained 
with the greatest facility ; and at that season 
there are peculiar motives for the cultivation 
of it. Would you make sure of giving unto 
God his right, and of rendering to the great 
Creator and Governor of the world the glory 
due unto his name, begin to do it soon : be- 
fore the glittering vanities of life have dazzled 
and enslaved your imagination, before the 
sordid interests of this world have gotten pos- 
session of your soul, before the habits of am- 
bition or of avarice, or of voluptuousness, q? 
of dissipation, have enthralled you ; while 
your minds are yet free, and your hearts yet 



223 

tender, present them unto God. It will be 
a sacrifice superlatively acceptable unto him, 
and not less advantageous to yourselves. — t 
Beseech him* that he will awaken in you every 
sentiment of piety ; beseech hkn that he will 
direct and prosper your endeavours, to ac- 
quire, to keep alive, and to improve, the 
genuine spirit of devotion. Inkeat him that 
he will give you to behold himself in what- 
ever else you see, and to discern his provi- 
dence in all the events that you observe, or 
that you experience. Put your hearts into 
his hands, and importune him, (if impor- 
tunity it may be called,) to lay them open 
unto all the blessed influences of the disco-, 
veries he has made of himself and of kis will, 
in his works, or in his ways, or in his word. 
Implore him to give you, and preserve to you, 
the liveliest sensibility to all things, spiritual 
and divine ; and while thus you. ask it, seek 
for it, in the conscientious use of the appointed 
means of grace, and by every method that 
intelligence, and prudence, and experience, 
recommend to you. Let it be a perpetual 
object with you every day, to be improving in 
this heavenly temper. The spirit of devotion 
will be very bard to kindle in the frozen 
bosom of old age, and not very easy to intro- 
duce through the giddy heads into the busy 
hearts of manhood, or advanced youth. I 



2U 

3o not love to speak evil of the world, and 
you know that I am no advocate for super- 
stition and austerity ; yet in fidelity to you, 
my friends, I must say, that in my appre- 
hension, at least, such are the present man- 
ners of the world, such the mode of educa- 
tion in it, such its prevailing prejudices and 
customs, such the natural influences of con- 
versing ordinarily in it, such the views of life 
and happiness which it inspires, that if the 
spirit of devotion be not formed in early 
youth, there is mech danger that it will 
never be acquired at all. Though I might, 
without any degree of self-complacency, ima- 
gine that my habits are now formed, yet I am 
well persuaded, that if I should, even for a 
little time, accompany some, who by no 
means think disadvantageous^ of themselves, 
and who are thought well of by the world, 
through all the scenes, the conversations, the 
amusements, the idlenesses, into which day 
after day delivers them, the spirit of devo- 
tion would be totally evaporated from my 
heart ; and except, perhaps, that the sentir 
ments of compassion might occasionally agi- 
tate it, as to all the better passions of our 
nature, it would soon be lulled into a stagnant 
and unbroken calm. What you. experience 
or apprehend I know not, but my judgment 
must be directed by that, maxim of the pro- 



225 

phet, that " as face answers unto face ih 
" water, so is the heart of man." If you 
wish then to reach that better world, where 
devotion, pure and ardent, is one of the most 
striking characters of its inhabitants, and, at 
the same time, one of the most essential in- 
gredients in the happiness that they enjoy, 
you cannot be too early, and you cannot be 
too constant in your endeavours to acquire 
and maintain the spirit of devotion. It is an 
acquisition well worth ail that it can cost you 
to attain it ; for if the genuine spirit of devo- 
tion occupies your heart, it will preserve you 
from the corruptions that are in the world, 
it will give you courage to be singular ; when 
to do your duty it will be necessary to be 
singular; it will make all your duties easy, 
and most of them it will make pleasant to 
you ; it will shed the sweetest light upon the 
pleasing scenes and incidents of life, and will 
diffuse its cheering rays even over the darkest 
and most gloomy. 

The pleasures that you may take, will be 
infinitely more enjoyed by you, if God, the 
Author of them, has possession of your hearts ; 
and the pains you cannot shun, will be fay 
less grievous to you, if God, who maketh 
darkness and createth evil, be regarded by 
you as the wise and kind Dispenser of you** 
lot. Remember, then, while you are yet 



226 

entering upon life, " remember your Creator 
" in the days of your youth, before the evil 
" day comes, and the years draw nigh, in 
" which ye shall say, I have no pleasure in 
«* them." Those will be bad days to acquire 
and cultivate the spirit of devotion : but the 
spirit of devotion, acquired and cultivated, 
and confirmed before, will convert those bad 
days into good ones. If you would be happy 
when you die, be pious while you live. If 
you would be cheerful when you are old, be 
religious while you are young. These objects 
you will acknowledge are well worthy your 
pursuit ; and to your own convictions I ap- 
peal, that there are no other means by which 
you can attain these objects. To those who 
have let that golden opportunity slip by 
them ; whose youth is past, and the spirit of 
devotion not attained ; whose manhood is 
arrived, and that temper not yet formed ; 
whose old age is come, and their hearts still 
sensual, frivolous, and vaia; I have no comfort 
to administer, for I have no authority to 
comfort you. Your best friends can only pity 
you and pray for you, that God will take 
away your stony hearts, and give you hearts 
of flesh. He can do it, no doubt ; will he do 
it, is the question. Never, my young friends, 
never let that question be asked concerning 
you. Surely you do not envy their condition^ 



22? 

concerning whom it may be justly asked* 
take heed that you do not come into their 
place. 

To conclude : do not fear to admit the 
sentiments, and to cultivate the spirit of devo- 
tion ; there is nothing tedious, dull, or irk- 
some in it. It is pleasant even as pleasure's 
self. Though I am about, to adopt the lan- 
guage of a poet, it is not the language of 
imagination merely that I speak ; what has 
been said of liberty, with some degree of 
truth, may, with the most perfect truth, be 
said of the genuine spirit of devotion, it alle- 
viates trouble, and enhances pleasure, 

" It makes the gloomy face of nature gay, 

Ci Gives beauty to the sun, and pleasure to the day." 

ADDISON* CATO> 



THE END, 



BOOKS PUBLISHED BY THE EDITOR. 



1. CRITICAL REMARKS on many important Passages b£ 
Scripture, by the late Rev. Newcome Cappe ; with an En- 
graving of the Author. 2 vol. 8vo. 1802. 

2. SERMONS, chiefly on Devotional Subjects, by the same 
Author; together with MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE, by the 
Editor. With an Appendix, containing a SERMON preached 
at his interment, by the .late Rev. Wm. Wood. Also a SER- 
MON on occasion of the Death of ROBERT CAPPE, M. D. 
with MEMOIRS OF HIS LIFE, by the Rev. C. Well- 
beloved, 8vo. 2d Edition, 1816. 

3. A CONNECTED HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF 
CHRIST, as given by the four Evangelists ; with REFLEC 
TIONS, suggested by the scenes, occasions, and trying circum- 
stances which gave rise to many of the edifying Discourses 
recorded in the Gospels. By Catharine Cappe. To which 
are subjoined many important NOTES illustrative of the Gospel 
History, transcribed by the Editor from the short-hand Papers 
of the late Rev. N. Cappe, 8vo. 1809. 

4. THOUGHTS ON VARIOUS CHARITABLE AND 
OTHER IMPORTANT INSTITUTIONS, and of the best 
Mode of conducting them, to which is subjoined an ADDRESS 
TO THE FEMALES OF THE RISING GENERATION. 
1814. 

5. SERMONS, chiefly on Practical Subjects, by the late 
Rev. Newcome Cappe, 8vo. 1815. 



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